


Fifteen Acres of Broken Glass

by sarsaparillia



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fem!Tony, older brother!Bruce
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 35,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarsaparillia/pseuds/sarsaparillia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plan A didn’t work out, and neither did Plan B. In which there is no Plan C, and everyone is seriously in trouble.</p><p>Alternatively: Toni Stark meets Pepper Potts and Captain America, and Batman nearly has an aneurysm as a result.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in the early hours, we are all ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mia_wallace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia_wallace/gifts), [sheeb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheeb/gifts).



—

.

.

.

.

.

 _Plan A_ was Afghanistan.

But that… yeah, okay, that really didn't work out. Like, that _really_ didn't work out, and Toni didn't really like to remember it because when she did, the arc reactor in her chest purred just a little louder, humming _i'm keeping you alive i'm keeping you alive i'm keeping you alive_ , and how was _that_ for a reminder?

 _Plan B_ was—

Wait, wait, that didn't make sense. She really needed to explain about _Plan A_ first, because really, _Plan A_ set the whole thing into motion.

 _Plan A_ wasn't _just_ Afghanistan.

 _Plan A_ was Bruce Wayne.

And to get from _Plan A_ to _Plan B_ , she needed to explain about the whole thing logically, and Afghanistan really only happened because of Bruce (well, okay, mostly it happened because she was trying to _spite_ Bruce), and so to get to _Plan B_ , she had to talk about Bruce first.

Toni Stark met Bruce Wayne in the counselor's office in her first week of boarding school. She'd stomped out of the office, long dark hair everywhere, and flipped them all off as she went. The collective gasp of indignation from all the ladies in the room made her smile.

Toni had gone through eighteen different therapists in less than half as years, and none of them had ever been able to get her to talk. She wasn't crazy, though: they'd had her tested.

She was just a genius.

(It was almost the same thing, though, in an eleven-year-old girl.)

On her way out, though, she'd caught sight of a boy in a dark suit, hands clasped in his lap. His knuckles were white, face drawn tight and white.

Toni thought he was pitiful.

She didn't say anything to him at all.

The door to the counselor's office slammed shut behind her

So really, they didn't even really officially meet like that, either, now that she thought about it. That was just the first time she'd seen him. Toni had a lot of friends—well, not really, she just had a lot of people who knew her last name and the fact that she had a lot of money, and well, okay, this was boarding school, _everyone_ had a lot of money, but Toni was a _Stark_ , and that sort of meant something _different_.

They all knew she was a genius.

Toni was eleven, and she could already tell that she hated ingratiation. It was an insult.

So that night after everyone had gone to bed, she snuck out of her room, and headed straight for the bathroom. The girl in the mirror was gorgeous. Toni took after her mother; she had her mother's perfect cupid lips and pert nose and high cheekbones and long, dark curls—but she had her father's smile and her father's eyes and her father's brain, so that was something.

She took another look at herself. She missed her mother. She missed her father. But this was what rich people did and Toni could remember them arguing— _she's better off here, I can teach her more just by letting her watch me work than any of those twits at any school we could put her in_ — _SHE NEEDS TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE_ FRIENDS _, HOWARD_ — _I still could do it better_ —

She hated everything about it.

And she was only eleven. That was what they called _behavioural problems_.

Toni took scissors to her hair.

There was violent, vicious satisfaction as the long curls fell to the floor in muffled _thumps_. She cut her hair into short, uneven tufts that fell around her face, jagged and rough and _ugly_.

Toni pressed her hands hard against the mirror, got up real, real close, and surveyed her work. There was hair everywhere, hanging like a slash across her eyes, sticking up at the back, atrociously asymmetric, dreadful—it was _perfect_.

Her mother would have hated it.

 _Not bad_ , she thought, and grinned brightly with her teeth. She thought vaguely that maybe she should dye it some hideous colour, still smiling like she wanted to eat the world. There were a lot of colours that could put people off. Like orange. Or neon green. Or _bright crimson red_.

Toni had always liked red.

(Behavioural problems, remember?)

It would be _great_.

It also meant she'd be sneaking past the boys' dorms to get to the lab, and then she'd have to mix the dye herself. Toni liked chemistry. But the sun was going to rise in—a glance out the window told her a little less than three hours. Three hours was not enough to make the right colour dye, _plus_ bleach her hair. Theoretically she could do it, if she moved fast enough.

But if there was one thing that her father had taught her, it was that mixing chemicals was a delicate process (unless you wanted them to go _boom_ , in which case, fuck delicacy and do as you please).

And Toni was nothing if not her father's daughter.

For now, the haircut was going to shock everyone, and she might even get a full day of peace. The thought was immensely cheering, and Toni slipped out of the bathroom with a toss of her newly-shorn hair.

She left the long dark curls behind her on the floor as a proverbial _fuck you_ to the cleaning staff. They would know it was her—her, with her shorn hair and her bright smile—and she would know that they knew it was her, but what could they do?

She was Antonia Emilia Stark, and _no one_ could _touch_ her.

The sound of rushing water caught her attention. It was coming from across the hall, from the boy's bathroom, and well, _that_ was stupid. Whoever it was was obviously trying to get caught, and Toni had no time for fools.

She didn't have a saviour complex, either, but _come on_. Who on earth ran water _that_ loudly in the middle of the night without wanting to get caught? They were _begging_ for attention. Toni was good at attention.

Taking it, at least. Being scrutinized, being watched, being adored, she was good at that. _Giving_ wasn't her strong suit, but she was getting there, okay? Like, this was Toni trying. Trying. She was good at trying.

She shoved the door open, strode in with her stride a stom, and glared at the boy sitting under the steaming shower spray. He was wearing a suit, and Toni thought— _I know you. From earlier. You were that guy_.

She didn't even know his name.

"What the _hell_ are you _doing_!?" she demanded.

"Sitting," he said. He was soaked and staring at the floor. He didn't move.

This was not what Toni wanted. She set her hands on underdeveloped hips, just as her mother always did when she was annoyed at her father, and she glared down and down and down. "Look at me!"

It seemed worked, because he looked up, at least for a second. Then he dropped his gaze back to the floor. "What d'you want?"

Toni squinted at him. "You're that kid, aren't you—you were at the counselor's—you're that— _oh_ , you're that kid from Gotham, aren't you? The one who—?"

"Don't say it," he cut her off there, and he looked up at her and his eyes were a blaze of fury and grief and loss, and something tugged inside her stomach. It might have been pity. She remembered the newspaper headline _WAYNE INDUSTRIES CEO AND WIFE SHOT DEAD_ and how loud her father had sworn.

She still remembered his fingers curling around the phone and screaming "THOMAS IS DEAD, JESUS CHRIST, THOMAS AND MARTHA ARE DEAD," into the receiver.

Things went a little blurry, after that, because suddenly her mother and father were trying to explain that they needed to leave, that they'd be back soon, but they had to go and she couldn't come with them. It was very important that she stay safe. She was five.

Toni had nodded resolutely, and clung to Jarvis' hand.

They'd been gone for three weeks.

And now, sitting here in front of her, was the boy her parents had gone to see.

(Probably. Toni could put two and two together perfectly _fine_ , thank you.)

"Aren't you cold?" she asked.

"No," he said.

Toni made a very ugly face. Her mouth twisted up and her nose scrunched and her forehead creased and she—well, she sort of hit him. Okay, not _sort_ of. She punched him. She punched him _hard_.

"Stupid!" Toni said. "Stupid, stupid, stupid, get up, you're so stupid—what's your name, by the way, that's important information because if y'don't tell me I'm just gonna keep calling you stupid—"

"What are you _doing_?" the kid asked as Toni unceremoniously turned him off the water, and pulled him up off the floor. He was bigger than she was, heavier, older—but Toni had always been a hard-headed little brat, and this was no different. She heaved him into standing, and glared up at him.

"I'm waking you up. Name, stupid. What is your _name_."

He was silent as he stared down at her, and Toni already knew what he saw: a girl with dark crazy eyes and badly-cut hair with her chin stuck out, an accidental little rebel who probably had engine grease all over her pyjama bottoms.

(Toni was her father's daughter.)

"…Bruce," he said, after a moment. "You probably already know—"

"My parents went your parents' funeral," she said. She couldn't help it, it just sort of slipped out, and Toni had never had a filter between her brain and her mouth anyway, it was what always got her in trouble, she never meant it to, but. Well. It was just one of those things.

He blinked at her, taken aback.

"Oh, shit, sorry, you're probably still not over that, um, I mean, that wasn't, I didn't—" Toni started, and clapped her hands over her mouth. She really needed to get a handle on that swearing thing.

(But really, it _wasn't_ her fault—anyone who spent _any_ sort of time around Howard Stark swore like a sailor, especially his little girl, his little Ironbrand, made of molten steel and brains and engine grease. Toni wasn't good at friendships but she was good at mechanics and schematics and lies, and she _was_ still only eleven. She had plenty of time to get better at that swearing thing.)

The corner of his mouth pulled up a little bit. "You're a freak."

"Yeah, well, you're stupid," she said in reply. "Now come on, we gotta get outta here before the teachers wake up and yell at us, I've already been in trouble today and I _really_ don't want them restricting my access to the lab again, that was _torture_ —"

"Do you ever stop talking?" Bruce asked.

Toni brushed her bangs out of her eyes and shrugged. Her shoulders were too-skinny and birdlike, a tiny little thing who'd barely broken in her wings.

"Not really," she said.

"Huh," he said. "Okay."

"You're gonna get sick, you know," she said. They walked back to their dorms as quietly as they could—for Bruce, this did not seem to be a problem. For Toni it was, because there was finally someone who didn't only see her father's name and saw this wild wicked-smart girl underneath, and that was pretty cool.

Bruce didn't even roll his eyes. "I don't get sick."

" _Everyone_ gets sick," Toni countered, and shoved his shoulder. "Here's my dorm, I gotta go, but get some sleep, okay? Don't blame me when you _do_ get sick, though, because that's totally off-base and not cool and whatever. So. Just. Yeah, you know what, I'll just—go."

Toni sort of waved awkwardly at him, and totally didn't run for the door to her room. She slammed it behind her ( _thank god thank you god for not making me have a roommate,_ she thought, _or wait, thank mom or dad or whoever but thank you thank you thank you_ ).

She didn't bother peeking back out to see if he was still waiting.

Why?

Because ugh, _boys_.

Toni didn't sleep that night.

That wasn't really a surprise.

Toni didn't sleep a lot of nights, really. Probably why she was so short, or something, she'd read that once—kids who drank coffee and didn't sleep were growth-stunted, but she was small for her age anyway, so she didn't care too much. Too skinny, too bony, too—yeah. Whatever.

Breakfast was breakfast. She glared at one of the older girls (one who seemed profoundly offended by Toni's unsolicited hair adventure) until she caved and got her coffee, and Toni actually almost thanked her. But it was watery and not sweet enough, so she didn't.

Instead, she plopped herself down next to Bruce.

(That was how _Plan A_ started. That morning, right then, sitting right there at a plastic table under fluorescent lights. But there was a lot more to it than that, because _Plan A_ was. Well. _Plan A_ was the long game. It just didn't work out, you know?)

"…What are you doing," he said.

Toni had a premonition that this question was going to be a very big part of both their lives for a very long time.

"Sitting," she said. She grinned at the irony of it, but he didn't seem to enjoy it quite as much.

"I can see that, Antonia."

"Oh, saying my name wrong. Ten points off of _your_ score card," she said, scrunching up her nose again. She did that a lot, the scrunching thing. Force of habit, she guessed.

"Your name is Antonia, correct?"

"Technically," she replied. "That's what it says on my birth certificate, anyway."

"So your name is Antonia."

"Toni," she said. "My name is _Toni_. Do you want me to start calling you _Brucey_? Because if you do, I can, and—"

His face went dark, which Toni thought was funny for someone so pale. His eyes were like ice, and she itched to shake him. He seemed like the type that needed a good shaking every so often.

Toni smiled meanly. "Yeah, that's what I thought. So I'm Toni, and you're Bruce, and we'll be friends, and it'll be great."

"Do I have to." It wasn't really a question.

Toni shook her hair out of her eyes again. "You don't really have a choice," she said. "Deal with it."

—

So really, _that_ was how _Plan A_ started.

But that certainly wasn't how it ended.

They fought a lot. Toni had skipped a grade (three, actually, not that anyone was counting), and she and Bruce had more than a few classes together. She was top in Science and Math and Geography and Automated Mechanics (everyone always forgot she was a genius), but he was top in everything else, so no one really cared.

Toni was still eleven. Bruce was fourteen. She broke his nose twice in the first year they knew each other, both times because he'd tried to meddle with the circuit board she was working on.

 _No one_ meddled with Toni's circuit boards.

He seemed to forgive her, though, when she filched jam-stuffed donuts (the only good kind, they both agreed) from the cafeteria and left them in a red box on his pillow tied with a golden ribbon.

Gold and red. Those were her colours, Toni; red because it made her think of power, and gold because gold meant money which… also meant power. Toni wanted power. Not to be a crazy megalomaniac or anything, but just enough that she could be her own person, and not Daddy's Little Project or Mummy's Perfect Girl.

So gold and red and sometimes the dull shine of iron, the smell of antiseptic and the burn of gasoline over the stomp of heavy boots that completely clashed with her school uniform. That was Toni, alright.

Bruce just mostly wore black, which he argued was far superior in terms of workability and general aesthetics. Toni thought he was entirely too boring, and really, she had no idea why she hung out with him at all.

( _Plan A_. The long game. _Right_.)

She invited him to the Stark Manor for Christmas.

He declined.

She punched him on principle, but didn't say anything else about it. He had his own demons, and so did she.

They both came back after the holidays a little more hollowed out.

Toni felt like something had split her open and scooped her insides out—she would be twelve in less than three months, and her mother was dying. She took one look at Bruce in his new suit—it fit him wrong in the shoulders, when was someone going to teach him about _tailors_ —with his haunted eyes and his too-still features. It was almost February.

She smacked him—"You are so _abusive_ , Jesus, Toni,"—and then wrapped her arms around him and stuck her face into his chest and muttered "Stupid, stupid, stupid, you should have come, Jarvis would have liked the company, he and Alfred coulda done that whole spooky twin-talk thing they do, and we could have had dumb presents and cake and—"

She stopped there, because he'd raised his arms and awkwardly hugged her back, and they just sort of held on to each other, desperate for some sort of contact.

"My mom's dying," she said. "I know you don't—I know you have don't have—things, and I know—issues, I mean, but I, but I, I just, I need—god, stupid, you're like the only family I have—"

He hugged her a little tighter, and that was okay. That was good.

He didn't say anything, but Toni didn't really expect him to. She didn't expect anything because this was Bruce. And as much as he made her want to scream and nearly break his nose again (for the fifth time, at last count), he was quiet and dumb and made her feel a little bit normal, and that was better than saying anything, really.

Because, yeah, okay, Toni was a little bit crazy, everyone knew that, but Bruce Wayne didn't seem to mind and one day she really was going to clonk him over the head with something hard to knock some brains into him (or some self-preservation, he had, like, _no_ self-preservation, what was _wrong_ with him).

"How long?" he asks.

"What?"

"How long do you think she has, Toni?"

Toni swiped at her cheeks (she was not crying, she was _not crying_ ), and heaved the deepest, longest, most broken-hearted sigh a eleven -year-old could. "Dunno. A month. Two, maybe. Dad told the doctors not to tell me, but I'm not stupid."

"I know, kid."

She made a face, and shoved her hair out of her eyes again. It was starting to grow out, and she still looked ridiculous. "Don't call me that, I'm only like two years younger than you and I'm _smarter_ than you are."

"Ouch," he said, deadpan.

"I will break your nose," Toni warned, but she was smiling again, and things sort of settled between them.

He didn't ask about her dad, and she didn't ask what he'd gotten for Christmas. Those topics were still out of bounds because they still hurt too much, and Toni understood nuance in the way only a genius-girl could: she understood how to hit where it hurt and make it stay like that. She understood how to dig in deep and get underneath a person's skin and stay there until their soul leaked out through the wound.

Her mother had taught her that.

Poison was a woman's weapon, and Toni could be a poison.

But she didn't want to get Bruce involved in that, because he didn't deserve her crazy ( _I'm not crazy, they had me tested_ ) or her darkness or her anything.

And then Toni would remember that she was only eleven, and the whole thing was a ton of whale shit. Normal girls didn't think about things like this.

They lugged their stuff up into their dorms.

Toni went down to the lab before Bruce could catch her and make her eat something, and she stayed down there without leaving for three days. Didn't sleep, didn't eat.

No one came looking, either.

She didn't mind too much.

( _Plan A_ , Toni told herself over and over again. _We make the weapons, but we're careful who we sell them to, princess_ , her father muttered at the back of her skull. _Plan A_.)

By the end of the third day, it seemed like Bruce had had enough. He hacked into her lab-lock—when had he learned to do _that_ , not even the professors were good enough with computers to do _that_ —and picked her up and pulled her out of there right while she was in the middle of finally beginning to set the algorithm for AI leaning programs.

Toni was not pleased.

(Except, you know, secretly, she kind of was.)

"I hate you," she said.

"You need to eat," he replied, and carried her up into the buildings that were actually above ground, where normal people resided. Toni didn't like normal people, they had normal parents who didn't expect her to live up to dead men and women that she couldn't have been even if she _tried_.

"No, like, I _really_ hate you, Wayne," she said.

"Sure," Bruce said.

But he hoisted her into a piggy-back, and she didn't fight it, so that was something. Or maybe nothing. But Toni dropped her head to his shoulder because she, okay, yeah, she was _exhausted_ and she was _hungry_ and no one in this damn placed cared enough about her to make sure that she ate and slept expect _Bruce Wayne_ , of all people, and wasn't _that_ just the weirdest fucking thing in the world.

Saviour-complexes, Toni remembered. She didn't have one. Bruce did.

(Or maybe they'd just finally reached the point where they were enough like brother and sister that things like this were okay.)

They made it up to the cafeteria, and Bruce deposited her at one of the tables. If anyone saw something strange about this, they didn't say so—Toni was infamous and Bruce was _Bruce_ , so most people just kept their mouths shut.

He looked down at her. "Stay," he said.

"I'm not a _dog_ , you know," Toni retorted.

He just eyed her, and walked to the bar. Three minutes later, he came back with three different plates of food, and set them all in front of her.

She wrinkled her nose. "Why did you have to get Brussels sprouts? I hate Brussels sprouts."

"Toni," Bruce said. "Shut up and eat."

"Fine," Toni sighed heavily. She glared at him as she ate, but she did eat. She ate everything he put in front of her, all three plates of it. She even ate the Brussels sprouts. She wouldn't have done that for anyone else, not even Jarvis, and Jarvis had managed to get her to eat mashed peas, so that was saying something.

"You're a hateful person," Toni said, when she was finally finished.

"Drink this," he said, and held up a cup of something that was clear and liquidy and…

"Is that _water_?" Toni asked.

"Yes," said Bruce.

Toni grimaced. "I don't like water."

" _Drink_ it, Toni."

She made a sound that was sort of like a snarl, and downed the whole thing in one go. It didn't taste like anything, it was horrible; who in their right mind would drink this on a _daily basis_?

"I _hate_ you," Toni said.

"You're going to bed," Bruce replied, and was about to reach around to pick her up again.

This time, she managed to fend him off.

"What are you doing," she said.

"Forcing you to get some sleep," Bruce said, voice mild.

"Don't even go there, _Brucey_ ," Toni said. She bared her teeth at him in a way that more animal than human, but then, she wasn't feeling very human right then. Three days persisting on coffee and little else had left her—well, something that was not very human. "I left my lab—"

"Because I forced you to leave."

"—I ate—"

"Because I forced you to eat."

"And now I'm going to bed—"

"Because I'm forcing you to sleep."

"—But I can walk on my own! You're not my keeper, or, or my dad or something, or whatever, just— _UGH_."

Bruce snorted. It might have actually been a laugh, except that, you know, Bruce _didn't laugh. Ever_. Like, it was just not a Thing That Bruce Way Did. Toni knew that Bruce did All Sorts of Things, but laughing? Laughing was not among them.

"You're stupid," she grumbled.

"You always say that," he said, and set a hand on her shoulder. The touching thing, that was something they did. A little. Not much. But enough that it didn't freak her out and Toni just sort of nodded.

"S'cause you _are_ stupid," she replied. She swayed a little on the spot.

Eleven year old girls were not meant to live on coffee and machines. It just wasn't healthy. Toni sort of leaned against him as they headed for the dorms, half-asleep on her feet. Food did that to her—made her body remember that it was human, and that humans needed to sleep and eat and see the sun to keep going.

Stupid body.

Bruce had to drag her up the last few stairs, and she didn't even care that he picked the lock. Toni stumbled in after him and flopped down on her bed. There was something very wrong with this picture, she shouldn't have been this tired—

"You drugged me, didn't you," Toni slurred at him.

"Yeah, I did," Bruce nodded. "Go to sleep, Toni."

Toni tried to tell him that she hated him, again, because he would have at the very least deserved that, but, well, she couldn't quite get the words out.

Her last conscious thought was that this was probably what having an older brother was like.

Stupid Bruce.

—

Toni's mother died three days before her twelfth birthday.

"…You okay?" Bruce asked.

Toni glared at the floor. "Were _you_ okay when your mom died?"

That was a low blow, and they both know it. Neither mentions it, though, because Bruce understood how much Toni wanted to break things right then, break things and build them and break them again, because that was how Toni dealt with things like this.

She didn't talk about it, she didn't even want to think about it, she didn't—she couldn't—

God _damn_ it.

"Just leave me _alone_ , Wayne," Toni said, and shoved herself away from him.

Bruce watched her go, and come after her.

 _Good_ , Toni thought bitterly. _Good riddance_.

(Toni had gotten pretty good at lying to herself. _Plan A_. Whatever that was supposed to mean.)

She holed herself up in her room until her father came to pick her up. She didn't look at him. He didn't look at her. They didn't even touch. Toni didn't know if Bruce was watching, but frankly, she really didn't give a fuck. They were going to have her mother's funeral on her twelfth birthday.

What the _fuck_.

New York was crawling and ungodly and Toni hated everything about it. Jarvis looked down at her with old, sad eyes, and Toni thought _you're going to die soon, too, aren't you, just like everyone else, and then I'll be alone with dad, and god, this is such a mess, what do I even do_ —

That first night home, Toni did something she had never done in her life. She picked the lock on her father's liquor cabinet, pulled out the first three bottles she could find, and she got staggeringly, blubberingly, disgustingly drunk.

It was horrible.

She had no idea why her father liked the stuff, not at first.

But she kept drinking.

And suddenly everything was numb around her, gone fuzzy and silly and she thought of dumb Bruce with his stupid hero-complex, like sometimes he wanted to save her and sometimes not, and how maybe he'd be way better off without her.

Actually, Toni was pretty sure he would have been _way_ better off without her, but she was pretty sure she was too drunk to tell.

For the first time in her life, her head wasn't spinning with equations and biomechanics and algorithms that didn't make sense to anyone but her, and she was almost normal and _wow_ , if this was what being drunk was like, why hadn't she done it before?

Toni had resigned herself to dying young, so she was going to enjoy the hell out of it.

Her phone was somewhere around, and she wanted to call Bruce to share this experience with him, because weren't older brothers supposed to take your drinking the first time it happened? That's how it always went in the books that Toni sometimes secretly read when no one was looking, the ones about dragons and princesses and princes.

A lot of the time, thought, she didn't, because the princesses were always prissy little bitches and almost-twelve Antonia Emilia Stark had no time for _that_ , either.

She held her phone and squinted at it, and she couldn't remember his number. It was almost two in the morning, anyway, and hey, it was her birthday now, _wow_ , she was twelve, and that was so messed up, this whole thing was so messed up. Toni flopped backwards between the bottles (small and brown and was she this trashed off just beer? Was this how college kids did it? She was going to be one, soon, because she was too smart for this and for that and she was just too smart for her own fucking good. She was too smart for her own fucking good), and stared up at the ceiling.

She wasn't going to call him.

He wasn't her real brother.

Too bad for that, she thought.

Toni stood slowly, and thought _ooookay, maybe this was a bad idea_ , and she wanted to call for Jarvis or her mother because Jarvis and her mother were what made her feel better when she was sick, and her father was never home, and, oh god, she was going to pass out or vomit or something horrible.

But nothing happened, and Toni shook a little, and wobbled her way to the roof.

The fresh air cleared her head some and for the first time in a long time, Toni thought of her mother.

Soft hands and pearls and long perfect curls that fell around her face, and the constant perfume of Chanel No. 5 that followed her around everywhere she walked. There was way she was laughed, a gentle little lilt and would break into snorts and hiccups when she was actually amused, and how her mother was just perfect in every way. And Toni thought _god, god, how am I going to grow up without her, how am I going to live without her, she's my mom, this shouldn't have happened, I should have been better than this, smarter than this, something, anything_ —

Toni goes back inside, drinks some more, and passes out.

This is the first time, but it will not be the last.

And she is a mess the next morning.

 _Should've expected that_ , Toni thought darkly. She stared down at the array of make-up that had belonged to her mother, and the perfume, and the vanity and the desk, and every inch of her wants to destroy the whole thing.

But this was all she had left of the woman.

The girl in the mirror looked back at her with her father's dangerous deep eyes, ringed darkly from the hangover and the lack of sleep, tangle-hair still so badly cut and she knew that she'd never been the daughter her mother wanted.

Yes, Toni was her father's daughter.

The only thing she took from the vanity was the perfume. She tucked it into the pocket of her jeans, and it stuck it out like a sore thumb, but it was hers, now.

The rest, she knocked to the floor.

She didn't want it.

She didn't want any of it.

Toni turned and left the room. She closed the door very quietly behind her, shut the ghost of her mother in that quiet place and she was determined that one day, she was going to destroy this whole place and put them all to rest.

There were ten different black dresses hanging in her closet.

They hadn't been there the previous day.

Jarvis, then.

And Toni thought of his sad old eyes and his old hands and the sarcastic, biting way he'd taught her so much in so little time. Toni was twelve today, still too skinny and too fast and way too smart for her age, and going to her mother's _funeral_ , for god's sake.

The shortest dress still reached past her knees.

Rage, then.

"I'M NOT A _CHILD_ ," she screamed.

No one replied.

Toni snarled, pulled one off the rack (they all looked the same, it was like they were giving her a choice between monkshood and wolfs-bane and they were the _same fucking plant_ ), and went to hunt for scissors.

She'd done this before.

Toni cut the dress the same way she cut her hair. It was a hack-rough job that had no care to it, no precision, and it was dumb and stupid and ugly. It was exactly the way she wanted it. She cut it short, so short, and cut the sleeves off entirely.

It was a funeral.

It was also her birthday.

And she was damn well going to do exactly as she pleased. She left the edges ragged-jagged-tattered and when she slipped it over her head, it gaped loose in the front and looser in the back, the long pale lines of her bones just beneath the film of her skin visible, knees and thighs and she thought _good, good_.

But missing something.

Something colourful. Something to strike fear and passion and to show that she was still _powerful_ even without her mother, even without Jarvis, even without her _father_. She was Antonia Emilia Stark, who needed nothing and no one to help her control her world.

Red, she thought.

She needed red.

Her mother's things were still scattered all over the floor when Toni peeked inside. There was nail polish and eyeliner and lipstick, and she sorted through them all fast, fast, fast as she could, and—there.

It was the perfect shade.

Toni looked in her mother's vanity mirror, and carefully painted the lipstick onto her mouth. It was a slash of crimson on an otherwise blank canvas, and when she smiled, her lips curled up cruel and cold.

She brushed her bangs out of her eyes.

"I'm gonna eat the whole world, mom. Promise," she said aloud.

Toni didn't believe in god.

Toni didn't believe in much of anything.

But it felt good to say out loud. Tony looked down at her hands, rough from working with metal all the time. She was tired of being a child, tired of being away from her father and her butler and missing her mother's last days.

That stupid school wasn't going to hold her.

Not anymore.

Toni was going to raise hell, and if that meant leaving Bruce behind, then that was what it mean. He was probably already leaving, anyway—he had inheritance rights to his stupid company at eighteen, and that was only two years away.

She had 'til she was twenty-one. That was years and years and years. She could do anything. She could go wild, go crazy, go dancing through Manhattan's streets with too much money and too little dignity, and the funny thing was that her father probably wasn't even going to care.

Howard Stark didn't give a shit about anything.

So why should his daughter?

Toni ran her fingers through her shorn hair. She'd make weapons, too, weapons that could eat the world because Toni? Toni was smart like that. Toni could do things like that.

She was twelve and she was going to eat the world.

Fuck _Plan A_.

Toni had better things to do.

Like dealing with her mother's funeral.

She wore black heels and her ruined dress, knobbly knees poking out from beneath the cropped hem and when she raised an expectant eyebrow at Jarvis, he simply raised an expectant one in return. She tottered (but only a little) because heels were something she'd not often tried to wear before.

But then again.

There were a lot of things that Toni hadn't tried before the day before yesterday.

But she would master them like she mastered everything else.

What _else_ was being a genius good for?

Jarvis opened the door to the limousine and Toni slid in. The leather was black and slick underneath her fingers, and not for the first time, Toni wondered what it would be like to sink into the vehicle, become one with it. Girl and machine—she never really knew quite which one she was.

Bruce did a good job of reminding her she was human.

She didn't even know how that worked.

As it was, twelve-year-old Toni sunk into the seat, crossed her legs, and waited for Jarvis to drive her to the church.

Toni hated churches.

Toni hated a lot of things.

She hated that it wasn't raining. She hated that the sun wasn't shining. She hated that this had even happened in the first place—hated that the sky was nothing but white-grey above her, and she pressed her finger to her lips to assure herself that they were still red as blood.

They were, and so she stopped worrying.

Toni wiped the lipstick away on her dress.

It didn't even leave a mark.

A tiny little smile crossed her lips. Maybe Wayne had something there, about the black clothing—nothing showed up on it, at the very least.

(She had no idea why she was smiling. Shouldn't she be crying, or something? Sad? Angry? Something? _Anything_? But no, all she had was a deep empty hole inside of her chest that wanted to eat the world, eat the sun, consume anything and everything whole. Maybe that was how she was going to die. What a morbid thought.)

The ride was smooth and slow, and she thought Jarvis was trying to give her time to compose herself. But Toni had nothing to compose—she was no musician, she was technical. A very technical girl; music was beyond her except for techno and dubstep, both of which she could accept only because they came from a computer, and even that was stretching it.

Toni danced to the hum of engines, tiny but awkward in her father's workshop and her mother's laughter like bells in the background. But then she'd got surly and angry because she was _too smart_ and she hated that they kept her so protected.

And then they sent her away.

So the time when they'd been a family (a real family, whatever that meant)? That was over now. Toni wished it would rain. That would have been cliché. If her life was a movie, it would be raining. But her life wasn't a cheesy chick-flick romance, and it wasn't raining, so she went with it, because what _else_ could she do?

She didn't even realize it when they got to the church.

Toni suddenly really, really, really wished she was drunk again. It had to be better than this. Jarvis opened the door for her, and she stepped out—high heels first, the spindly legs, knobbly knees, too-short ruined dress and ruined hair, and the flash of cameras were so bright in her eyes that she had no idea what to do. She stood stunned still, for a moment, before she plastered on a weak smile, and began to walk forward.

 _Heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe_ , she told herself over and over. Her stride was long and they were _still_ taking pictures and she wanted to turn around and scream at them _DON'T YOU GET IT MY MOTHER IS DEAD LEAVE ME ALONE_.

But she didn't, and she walked straight past the usher without even looking at him. He reached out to catch her arm, "Er, miss, this is a private function—"

Toni turned to look him straight in the eye, and she set the death in her gaze to its highest level. "This," she enunciated, "is my mother's funeral. And you, you tiny, _pitiful_ little man, you're not gonna stop me from being let."

She brushed past him with all the grace a twelve-year-old spitfire on heels could manage, head held up straight, the crimson line of her mouth sharp and out of place against the white of her face. She could do this. She was going to show them all that she was Howard and Marissa Stark's daughter, that she belonged in this world, that she could _own_ this world.

Her father looked a mess.

He'd been drinking again.

(They said alcoholism was hereditary, and Toni thought _thanks dad, you fucked me up more than I thought._ )

And right beside him was Bruce Wayne.

He looked up and caught her eye and muttered something to her father, probably an excuse, because Howard didn't even look up. Toni crossed her arms over her meager chest.

"Can you _really_ not buy a suit that fits you properly, Wayne? Like, what, you suddenly don't have like a bagillion dollars to buy _one fitted suit_?"

He looked like he was about to bite back, but instead, he reached for her, and set his hand down on her shoulder. "This sucks."

And that was when Toni started to cry.

"You—you stupid—stupid—I wasn't gonna cry—I wasn't—this is all—I _hate_ you!" she got out, and Bruce awkwardly patted her head and then she was sobbing snot and tears all over his badly-fitted suit, and he sat her down next to her father.

Sitting there, it was all Toni could do to cry herself out.

Howard didn't even look at her.

Toni didn't blame him.

Not really, anyway.

Bruce sat on her left and her father sat on her right, and Toni stared at the coffin with eyes like hard black diamonds, cold as chips of ice. Her nose was red as her lips and the rims of her eyes, but that was that and this was this.

Toni didn't remember much of the service.

All she could think of was the fact that they were putting her mother in the ground and that there would be no more proper Christmases, and hey, maybe now she and Bruce could actually just get drunk together on eggnog and watch bad Christmas movies.

(She would have thought they should make out, but _ew_ , Bruce and kissing? _Ew_.)

But she did remember this:

"Your parents came to my parents' funeral. I thought I should return the favour."

"That is the most fucked up thing you've ever said to me."

"I try."

"You're so stupid."

And she sort of smiled and affectionately punched him in the shoulder. Because this was good. This was okay.

Bruce Wayne had a saviour-complex and Toni Stark really didn't (because she wasn't the girl to put herself on the line and hope and pray to the God-that-wasn't that that shit didn't blow), but that was okay. This was okay. She was going to be okay.

—

So that was _Plan A_.

Sort of.

Ish.

 _Plan B_ was meeting Pepper Potts.

That didn't happen until two years later, but it _did_ happen. In the meantime, Toni pulled pranks and dyed her hair ridiculous impossible colours and blew shit up, and Bruce mostly tried to keep her alive.

It seemed to work, because by the time she met Pepper, Toni was still breathing.

So that was a thing.

Toni had kissed girls before. She'd kissed boys before, too, obviously, (but never Bruce, because, uh, _ew_ , remember?), but she didn't really have a preference. People were people and they were all the same.

She'd believed that for a very long time.

And then Pepper walked in.

This thing was, Toni didn't know Pepper was Pepper at that point. At that point, Pepper was just a really hot chick who had red-blonde hair and a popped-out hip-swagger that Toni sort of wanted to make out with.

Bruce totally disapproved, which somehow only made it better.

That was the cool thing about being fourteen and a teenage genius living at a private boarding school for rich kids. She could kiss whoever she wanted, and never get in trouble for it (at least as long as she didn't get caught, but Toni was pretty good at not getting caught).

Toni's hair was pink, that week.

Gouge-your-eyes-out pink. That may or may not have contributed to the reception she received.

"Hey," Toni smirked at her, gave her the _come hither_ eyes that made people fall at her feet like the princess that she was.

The girl looked her up and down. "Hi."

Toni did not like the short, clipped tone. That was sad. Life was sad when pretty people didn't like her—and Toni tilted her head at the girl, and said "What's your name, darling?"

"Pepper Potts," the girl replied. She didn't look very impressed.

Toni pulled out her very best pout.

It didn't do too much. Pepper inclined her head, and said "Pardon me, I need to get class."

Toni stared after her. She whirled, and stared at Bruce. "But—but—did she just—"

Bruce shrugged.

"She did _not_ just turn me down," Toni said.

"Toni," Bruce warned.

"No, this is totally depressing! She turned me down, and, let's be honest here, _no_ one turns me down, I'm _Toni_ _Stark_!"

" _Toni_ ," Bruce said again.

And Toni looked at him, and thought _you were Plan A, but now you're more like my brother so Plan A didn't work out, obviously, so why can't I have a Plan B_?

But Bruce was giving her the _my parents are dead_ look that always shut her up, because it was kind of hard to argue with a guy who spent three-quarters of his time brooding and the other quarter studying astrophysics (which was a stupid area of study, Toni thought, there were _way_ better ways to waste time—like getting drunk).

" _Fine_ ," she sighed at him. She did that a lot, sighed at him like that—Bruce was probably the only person on the entire planet who could get Toni to tone her dramatics down.

"Be nice," he said.

"Get a nice suit," she countered, and ran her fingers through her pink hair. She'd bleached it to death, done terrible things to the once-beautiful dark curls, but she didn't mind. Not anymore. Because changing her hair was her reinvention, and when she wasn't spending time building robots in the lab, she was reinventing herself.

She'd done it so many times that it was starting to get tiring.

"What colour should I go next?"

"Natural," said Bruce.

" _Bo_ -ring," she said. And she didn't say _I'll look like my mother again and my father won't look at me anymore and can we just not, okay, can we please just not_. She didn't really have to; he would get it anyway.

Toni was beginning to think that they were starting to know each other too well. Or maybe it was just a kid-with-dead-parent(s) thing. Coulda been that, too, for all Toni knew.

Either way, they were both sort of fuck-ups.

(Toni more-so than Bruce, but neither was about to admit that.)

"Can I at least make _friends_ with her?"

He gave her that _my parents are dead_ look again. Twice in one day; that was kind of a feat, mostly because Bruce only pulled it out when he _really_ wanted to shut her up.

Toni tossed her head. "Fine. _Be_ like that. I'll make friends with her on my _own_."

"Don't get your heart broken," he said. He was still bent over his dumb astrophysics book, but she knew he was looking at her from under his eyelashes—he was such a _girl_ , sometimes.

She tossed her head, pink hair flickering around her face like fire— _Ironbrand_ , her father muttered in her head, my little _Ironbrand_ —and she stalked away. Toni threw a wide grin over her shoulder. "Don't worry about me, Brucey. My heart's made of iron!"

Bruce dropped his head to the table.

She was such an _idiot_.

Toni kept grinning, and didn't look back.

"Hey, Pep! Pepper!" she called.

Pepper was a swish of strawberry-blonde hair and gold-brown eyes, arms clasped tightly around her books. She was pale and lanky with her skirt kept down to a respectable length, and Toni was a little bit breathless about her. She was just really pretty, okay, and Toni _liked_ pretty people.

" _Yes_?"

"Look, I'm sorry, I, um, sometimes I say things that I shouldn't, and I—well, I never mean to, I mean, it's just, look, I'm sorry, can we be friends—oh wow, I totally forgot how bad I am at talking to people that aren't, you know, computers or Bruce but I guess Bruce is almost a computer—"

"You're rambling," Pepper said. Her lips were twitching the tiniest bit, and Toni could sense a smile beneath the marble exterior.

Toni grinned and shrugged, miming sheepishness (Toni Stark did not do _sheepish_ , not even for pretty girls and potential friends). "Yeah, I—I um, I do that. Kinda bad at this, uh, in-person thing. But uh. Hi! I'm Toni Stark."

"I know who you are, Miss Stark," Pepper said. Her voice was incredibly even.

Toni went very still. "If you're here on behalf of my father, you can _stuff_ it—"

And then Pepper laughed, and Antonia Emilia Stark fell a little bit in love with her. "I'm not working for your father, Miss Stark."

"Then who _are_ you working for?"

Pepper shrugged. "No one. I saw you in the paper."

Toni was in the paper every three weeks, mostly because she'd done something stupid that Bruce hadn't quite been able to talk her out of. Especially during the summer, when he went back to Gotham and Toni was left to her own devices: that was when the tabloids took pictures of fourteen-almost-fifteen-year-old Toni Stark swinging her hips on some dingy bar top table, drunk off her face just because she could be.

(Howard Stark didn't know his daughter anymore. No one knew Howard Stark's daughter anymore, not even Howard Stark's daughter. The alcohol was starting to get a little bit out of hand, but she could handle it. She always did.)

"Which time?" Toni asked.

"When your mother died," Pepper replied.

And Toni shut down, shut down completely, everything inside clicking into frozen silence, because _her mother was not a topic of conversation_. Not now, not ever, and she wished desperately for Jarvis or Bruce or even her _dad_ , god, even her _father_ was better than talking to a total (pretty) stranger about her mother.

"Oh," Tony said. "Yeah. Well."

"I'm sorry," Pepper said quietly.

"It was a long time ago," Toni responded automatically, and she tried to get her inner gears to unfreeze. She thought of the hum of radioactive material and stupid robots that never quite did what she made them for, and slowly, the ice receded from her soul.

"Not long enough, I don't think," Pepper said.

"Yeah, maybe not," and Toni had no idea why she was agreeing with this (pretty) stranger, but she was, and that was okay. Toni could do this, she could, she could make it work like how did with Bruce, and they would just be friends because friends were better than lovers, any day.

(A lot of the time, Toni forgot that she was only fourteen. The empty place in her chest was only getting emptier, and sometimes the only thing that filled it up was the brilliant slosh of vodka or whiskey or gin, and then she didn't remember anything anymore. She just felt so old sometimes, old in her bones, older than dirt and all the trees in the Amazon. Sometimes, she felt older than the sky.)

"Come on," said Pepper. "Let's get some lunch."

And so they did.

And that was how _Plan B_ came into existence: eating lunch with a pretty strawberry-blonde. It seemed that most of Toni's better plans came into existence when food was involved.

(Or alcohol, but whatever. Same difference.)

Toni Stark accidentally made friends with Pepper Potts.

(That was how she seemed to make all her friends, actually. That was pretty sad, when she actually thought about it, so she didn't think about it all that much.)

Quite frankly, Pepper Potts was a much better influence than Bruce Wayne was. Everyone could acknowledge that—Pepper could give Toni a single look, and Toni would freeze and stop whatever it was that she was going, which was _great_.

There were way fewer explosions in the chemistry labs.

Pepper's power was mystical. If the school allowed cults, there would have been one dedicated solely to her magical ability to control Toni's ridiculousness and channel it into things that were actually useful.

As such, Toni realized pretty quickly that she did _not_ want to make out with Pepper _at all_.

Pepper was _terrifying_.

But she got along with Bruce as well as anyone could get along with Bruce Wayne, and so the pair of school loners (freaks) became a trio (still freaks, but Pepper terrified everyone within a thirty-mile radius. Toni was so impressed with this ability that she was determined to hire Pepper to keep her company in order, once she got her hot little hands on it. Seven years, and she was counting down the days).

And for once in her life, Toni Stark thought things were going to be okay.

Which was great, really. Toni didn't often have many chances to just feel okay. But with Bruce in the background being all broody and protective and Pepper on her right colour-coding her notes and screeching at her underlings, things were really… okay.

Things were really good.

(Toni still didn't believe in God, but sometimes at night when no one was looking, she prayed that things would stay like this always and forever.)

That went to hell precisely eight weeks later, when Bruce turned eighteen in February.

Because that was Bruce took control of Wayne Industries.

Because that was when Bruce left school.

"Why didn't you _tell_ me!?" Toni thundered. "Why didn't you _tell_ me you were leaving? You should have told me weeks ago, I would have started figuring out a way to sabotage it—"

"That's precisely why I didn't tell you," Bruce said. He looked like he wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose. That was normal, acceptable Bruce Wayne behaviour.

But all Toni could see was red, red and gold, red boxes with gold ribbon stuffed with filched jam-filled donuts and _why, why hadn't he trusted her with this_?

Pepper stood to the side and stared between the both of them with sad-moon eyes, hands up in something that was a cross between defensive and calming, but Toni was so mad. Toni was so, so mad—she could taste the bile on her tongue, and jesus, where was the alcohol, she needed a shot or two or _eight_ to deal with this because Bruce wasn't supposed to leave without telling her, he just didn't _do_ that, he was the _responsible_ one in this relationship—

Except the fact was, he _was_ the mature one in the relationship.

And whether Toni admitted it or not, everyone was better off having only told Toni five days in advance.

"So you're going back to Gotham," she sneered at him. "Run back home to mummy and daddy, huh?"

There were lines that they'd never crossed with one another.

That was one of them.

Toni watched as he shut down, just the same as when she'd shut down on Pepper for mentioning her mother, and Toni wanted to apologize and punch him and whisper _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry_ into his chest like she always did when she fucked up, but god, she was getting _so good_ at fucking up that it was an almost tragedy to ruin something so absolutely terrible.

Toni Stark fucked up, and Bruce Wayne fixed it.

That was how it had been for a very, very long time. Almost four years.

But after what she'd just said, she didn't think he was ever going to try to fix her again.

And that was good, right, that was really good, because Toni broke everything she touched—she broke Happy and she broke Jarvis and she broke her father and her mother and it was actually sort of amazing that Bruce had lasted this long without breaking.

(Toni didn't have to worry about breaking Pepper. If anything, she had to worry about Pepper breaking her.)

So instead, Toni folded her arms and looked down her nose at him.

"Go on then," she huffed out through her nose. "If you're leaving, just _go_. Clearly none of us are important enough to keep you here for the rest of the year—god, I actually thought you were going to wait until my birthday, like I actually thought that maybe you'd stick around long enough to graduate, but I guess I was wrong, and—and—god, _stupid_ , I _hate_ you!"

Toni whirled—orange, this week, bright orange, jailbird orange—hair whirling behind her fast as a merry-go-round, and she stomped away as hard as she had the first time she'd ever seen him, leaving that stupid counselor's office when she was eleven and he'd just been sitting there looking small and sad and fragile and—and you know what, she didn't even want to think about it.

She really, really didn't even want to think about it.

Her stomach clenched.

There were three bottles of strawberry vodka tucked underneath her bed (the memory was fuzzy but went kind of like this: _keep it classy, ladies, we don't drink straight from the bottle_ ), and Toni needed it, _needed_ it.

 _Oh_ , she thought, _that must be the alcoholism talking_.

She tried not to think about too much, and slammed into her dorm.

Four gulps straight from the bottle later (classy, who needed classy, she was _Toni fucking Stark_ ), and she felt a little calmer.

Not calm enough to think straight, but that was probably just the alcohol talking.

Stupid Bruce was leaving.

Stupid, stupid, stupid Bruce.

There was a quiet knock on the door.

"Fuck off, Bruce," Toni said.

"It's me," came Pepper's voice.

"…Okay. You can come in. But not if he's there, because he's stupid and I'm mad at him and I'm not ever not going to be mad at him—"

Pepper opened the door and cut Toni off mid-rant. She just stood there with her hip popped out and her hair tucked out of her eyes, and she shook her head.

"You idiot," she said. There was affection in her voice.

"It's not fair, Pep. He didn't even _tell_ me," Toni could only croak at her.

"I know," Pepper said. She sat down on the edge of Toni's bed, and pulled the bottle of vodka from her hands. "I know. He should have told you."

"Did you know?" Toni asked.

After a long minute, Pepper sighed. "Yeah. I knew."

"You didn't tell me either, huh," Toni said.

"I would have if I could, Toni, you know that. He made me promise not to say anything," Pepper said softly.

"Why?"

"He didn't want to upset you."

Toni snorted. "Yeah. Well. Fuck him. Fuck him and his stupid broody-boy-saviour-thing, fuck him, fuck him, fuck him _so hard_ , I never wanna talk to him again, I _hate_ him—"

"Come here, silly," Pepper said.

She wrapped her arms around Toni's shoulders—god, Toni was so small and so fragile and he _really_ should have told her, Pepper thought furiously—and pulled her close.

"It's okay," Pepper murmured. "You can cry, if you need to."

Toni's lip wobbled, and her fingers curled into the collar of Pepper's uniform shirt.

"I _hate_ him," she croaked again.

And then Toni Stark cried for the first time since her mother's funeral, still in the arms of her best friend, but everything was different now. She cried for a long time, and finally Pepper put her to bed, tucked her in, and let her sleep.

When Toni woke up in the morning, Bruce Wayne was gone.

—

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_tb_ _c_.


	2. while the city sleeps, we rule the streets

—

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"Teach me make-up," Toni said.

"What?"

They were in Toni's lab (because that's what it was, at this point—students and teachers alike referred to the lowest basement laboratory as _Toni's Lab_ ; they were beginning to suspect that there was something _growing_ in there), Pepper sitting with her legs crossed on one of the lab benches while Toni poked at something or other with a screwdriver.

"I need to learn make-up," Toni said again. "Like that stuff you put on your face."

"There are magazines for that," Pepper replied. She was doing calculus homework, face drawn down as she played with numbers that Toni had no interest in—calculus was for children.

"Magazines _suck_ ," Toni said. "They're a waste of time. You're good at it, can't you teach me?"

A week and a half after Bruce Wayne had left the Best Boarding School for Rich Kids in the country to head back to Gotham City, Toni and Pepper stayed and worked and very carefully did not talk about him.

Toni hadn't said a word for the first three days after he'd been gone.

But she was laughing on the fourth day, and Pepper had thought that maybe it was better that they just pretended Bruce Wayne had never happened. Toni didn't have much family, so she'd made her own and then half of it had left.

"I could, I guess," Pepper sort of shrugged. Her attention was still focused on her homework, and, well, Toni didn't like that, because homework was boring and not _Toni_ so _obviously_ Pepper should pay more attention to _Toni_ than to her _homework_.

(Stark logic. It worked like that.)

Toni abandoned the half-finished bot, and jumped up on the lab table next to Pepper. She sprawled out across her friend's lap, sent papers flying everywhere. Her hair was the colour of the ocean, this week, a blue-green that wasn't quite teal—it was a little too bright, for that. It spread out across Pepper's plaid skirt, shifting currents against boxy rocks.

"What are you doing," Pepper laughed softly.

There was that question, again.

Toni had a feeling that maybe it was going to haunt her for the rest of her life.

It would have made sense, anyway.

"Distracting you," Toni replied. She curled onto her side, bird-shoulders poking out sharp against the thin material of her under-shirt, head still pressed down against Pepper's lap. She sighed out long and slow. "Hey, what colour should I go next?"

"Stay blue for a little while, Toni, it suits you" Pepper said. She threaded her fingers through the bright-coloured shag. "It's getting a little long, though."

"I like red better," Toni murmured. "Mm, that's nice."

"Do you want me to cut it?" Pepper asked.

"Nah," Toni said. "I'll cut it when I get mad or something. But, yeah, make-up, about that, I really need you to teach me how it works!"

Pepper snorted. "You're impossible to distract. Why? I thought you hated make-up."

Toni sort of shrugged (as much as anyone could while lying on a lab bench), and said "I do. But it's like—okay, Pep, you know how you, like, when you, like, you put it on, right, and you suddenly look like someone else? It's like—like armour. I need armour."

Pepper looked down at her, and Toni thought something changed in her face. It was a tiny something, sort of like pity and a little like love, and Toni wanted to loop her arms around Pepper's neck and kiss her until neither of them had breath left to breathe.

Or maybe she just wanted someone to hold on to for a little while, just for a little while, because maybe in a little while Toni would be normal and not stupidly smart and impossible to control and—it was just hard, okay. It was hard.

"You don't need armour, Toni," Pepper said. "You're fine as you are."

"Yeah, except I do. Look at me, Pep. I'm a dumb tiny girl, I can't—I can't do anything, I mean, I can build robots and figure out rents in the time-space continuum, but, like, actually physically doing anything? I'm so useless. I mean, even Bruce—"

Toni stopped.

It was the first time in a week either of them had said his name.

Toni took a slow, angry breath. "Even _stupid_ could fight. He was getting—training, or something, I don't know, but it was _something_ , and he had armour, and I don't, and I—I _need_ it, Pep. I really need it."

"So you want to learn make-up."

"It's a type of armour. It's gotta count, somehow."

Pepper eyed her warily. "You have to promise you won't do that _flinching_ you do."

"Flinching thing? Excuse me, I do no such _flinching_ thing, what even is that supposed to mean, that sounds like I have a _disease_ or something, which I definitely do _not_ , and Pepper, what even are you talking about, _flinching_? Are you serious?"

Pepper grinned. "You talk too much, Toni. Come on, let's get you cleaned up, and I'll… teach you make-up."

Toni's reply was a grin that was a little too wide and a little too shiny and maybe a little bit too wet, but she knew that Pepper wouldn't say anything.

Pep was pretty good at knowing when not to say anything.

That was something Toni could probably take a lesson or eight from, but then.

Stark Logic.

Toni was grease and gracelessness and Pepper could deal with that—at least it wasn't tears or rage, but that wasn't how Toni worked, wasn't how _smart_ people worked (or actually, it might have been how smart people worked, but Pepper mostly spent her time with a probably-clinically-insane genius girl, so she couldn't say for sure). She tugged gently on Toni's hair, and Toni bounced up, wild-child and magic covered in engine oil, eyes crinkling up at the corners like they always did when she was really pleased.

Toni tossed her ocean-hair and hoped off the lab bench. She stretched, and her spine went _pop-pop-pop_.

Pepper winced, and Toni could only laugh. "Oh, c'm _on_ , Pep! You've seen me do worse."

That was true.

And then Toni slipped her hand through Pepper's, and dragged her away from the lab, skipping. There were still things popping with electrical sparks, but neither girl looked back.

That was the thing about Toni, Pepper thought.

Once you started looking, it was hard to look away. Because Toni shone. She shone like moonlight on broken glass and strobes and New York lights and shady drug deals. She shone like a heat wave off pavement, a mirage in the distance. She shone like Christmas lights and the after-image of lightning against the back of your eyes.

And that was the problem with girls like Toni: they burnt hard and fast and bright and never apologized to anyone, but they didn't live long.

Pepper couldn't keep up.

Toni pulled hard on Pepper's hand. They were supposed to be in class, and Pep probably cared but Toni really didn't—she had make-up to learn and then she would be okay, she would be okay, she would be okay because she could hide the things that haunted her and no one else would be able to see them. Make-up would be her armour (just until she could build her own).

So she learned.

She learned about foundation and blush and eyeliner and mascara. She learned how to turn her face to something menacing, something threatening, something dangerous. She learned seduction and the art of smiling with one's mouth but not one's eyes. She learned innocence and destruction with Pepper's hands on her face, brushing red-gold sparkles across her eyelids.

Toni had always been a quick learner, and it wasn't long before she shoved Pep away, and tried it for herself.

She ended up drawing diagrams for the rudiments of repulsor tech on the mirror in brown lipstick instead, and Pepper could only sigh.

That was so very Toni.

"What? It's brilliant, look at it, I could totally patent this, it'd be like a totally different type of propulsion, I bet it would work great underwater, but I guess I'd have to test that, so I—Pep, are you listening to me?"

Pepper was leafing through one of the many magazines Toni had filched from the younger girl's dorms to help their process along (frankly, they'd have been of no help at all—why on _earth_ would Toni care about who was wearing what this season, that was a stupid waste of time), and didn't even look up.

"No, Toni, I'm not," she said.

Toni pouted, a little put out, and then turned back to the mirror. "Do you think I could get someone to remove this so I could keep the equations? I mean, not that I couldn't reproduce them, but that'd be so much work, and—"

Toni rambled on mindlessly, but her fingers moved quick, skating over the chemical products in front of her, and a part of her brain she didn't use often flared up. _What would mom think of me, now_?

She left that train of thought alone.

It would only lead to tears, and Toni had long turned herself to steel. Bruce was still a small sharp ball of dry ice beneath her sternum; he was too close to her heart to not hurt, but not close enough to destroy her entirely.

She wondered where he was, and then she decided that she didn't care.

He'd show back up if he ever felt like.

Which he probably wouldn't.

Toni set her hand against the mirror, and smeared the equations into nothing. Her hand came away a glistening dark brown, and she couldn't even bring herself to care. She rubbed it off on her skirt.

Pepper looked up. "Toni?" she asked. "You okay?"

Deep breath in, Toni thought, and make your lie a believable one. "Yeah. I'm fine. I just realized that you should, y'know, be in class or whatever. Gotta keep that scholarship up—although, really, Pep, I don't know why you won't just let me pay for it, then we could goof all _all_ the time—"

Pepper laughed. "We've already had this argument, Toni. You're not allowed to pay for my education. But you're right, I should get to class. Are you going to come?"

"Nah," Toni shook her head. She very carefully avoided Pepper's gaze. "I'm going to, uh, reproduce those designs, I guess, downstairs. I just, um, I need—"

Pepper's hand on her arm calmed her some.

"It's okay, Pepper said quietly. "I get it. See you later, then?"

"Yeah," Toni replied. "Later."

And she watched Pepper gather up her stuff, grinned brightly when she glanced up and gave her one of those Looks that Pep was so good at, and waited until she was gone before Toni punched the mirror as hard as she could.

It did nothing at all, except possibly broke two of her fingers.

"Ow," she muttered, and stretched them out. " _Ow_! Okay, Toni, we're not going to do that again, okay? That hurt, that was not cool, and I just—ugh."

She sighed aloud. "I really fucking hate you, Bruce. I really do."

But he couldn't hear her, and she was still the friend who got in way over her head no matter what it was she was getting into. He was probably better off without her—and for that matter, so was Pepper, but Toni was selfish, and she had no idea how to let either of them go.

She plugged all the sinks, turned on all the faucets, and let the water run. Toni slid down the opposite wall, and sat there for a while with her arms wrapped around her knees. She had some thinking to do.

Toni was a technical girl. She could fix things, but most things she touched just broke. People, machines, friendships—she was technical, but things still hurt and still bled because she wasn't one of the machines that made so much sense.

She didn't have a technical heart.

(Not yet, anyway.)

—

Time went on.

That was what time did, Toni figured. It went on. She grew up. Pep grew up. Bruce had grown up a long time ago, but he wasn't around anymore, so she couldn't really compare. Toni turned fifteen, and then suddenly she was taking exams that she never studied for (never had to study for, rather), and then it was summer.

Pepper went home to her family.

Toni went to New York, but it wasn't really home.

And she was all alone in the big old mansion her father had built before she'd been born with only Jarvis for company because her father was away in Africa or something, searching for more things to blow up. She wasn't at all surprised—he still couldn't look at her, three years after the fact. Her mother's death had been an unexpected, unwanted progression in all their lives, and sometimes Toni thought her father blamed her for it.

Well, that was something they had in common, at the very least.

New York was lonely in the summer time. Oh, all the girls from all their expensive Upper East Side schools came home to flit about and cause trouble, but Toni had never had never been one of them, and she wasn't about to become one of them now.

Or at least, that's what she'd thought.

Toni was in her father's old workshop happily banging away on the repulsor tech that she'd come up with at school, when the intercom flickered to life.

"Miss Stark, there's a letter addressed to you."

"Jarvis, I'm _working_! Can't it wait?!" she called.

"No, Miss Stark. If you would please come upstairs and collect your mail."

"Can't you bring it down?!" she called again, and winced away when sparks flew from the tiny machine she was working. "I've kinda got my hands full, here!"

She could hear the displeasure in his voice. " _No_ , Miss Stark. Leaving your work alone for five minutes will not kill you. I have cookies."

Bastard, Toni thought. He was always bribing her with sweets. What kind of butler _did_ that?

( _One who cares very much about you_ , said a quiet voice at the back of Toni's skull, and she sighed. There was no arguing with herself, sometimes.)

And so she pulled the tech away from the electrical cord, set it down far away from most things that might explode (there was really no telling what might or might not explode, in this lab), pulled her gloves off, and dashed upstairs. She left a path of grease and dirty boot-prints behind her in some sort of passive-aggressive attack on Jarvis for making her leave her lab while she was in the middle of something important.

Cookies _were_ important, too, though.

Hence the passive-aggressive.

"Wash your hands before you touch those cookies, Miss Stark."

"You suck, Jarvis," she told him.

The old man raised an eyebrow at her. "And I'm very sure you'd like to die from some sort of poison that no one in the world has ever heard of before, hm? Wash your hands, or no cookies for you."

Toni grumbled liked a child, and went to wash her hands.

She came back dripping wet and mostly clean, and yeah, okay, so maybe the faucet attacked her a little bit and she was soaking, but at least there would be cookies at the end of it, and flopped down at the granite counter and stared at Jarvis.

"Can I have my cookies now?"

"Mail first, Miss Stark."

Toni continued to grumble like a child, and finally she reached for the piece of mail she was so dreading. It was a cream-coloured envelope, thick—ugh, that meant it was expensive, and, _double ugh_ , it was actually dressed to _her_ , not just _House Stark_.

Which meant that, _ew_ , she was actually going to have to show up.

And Toni didn't even know who it was from.

But it _smelled_ like a bad idea.

Because _that_ was a thing that totally worked. She ripped the envelope open, because what, she wanted her cookies and there were no knives in her general area and ripping things to pieces was kind of sort of therapeutic. In a really weird probably unhealthy way, but whatever, Toni did weird probably unhealthy things all the time.

(Sometimes it really was a wonder that she was still alive.)

"The Van der Woodsens are still _alive_?" Toni asked.

"Yes, Miss Stark," Jarvis said. He held out the plate of cookies. "Take two."

"Only _two_?"

Jarvis gave her a look very reminiscent of Bruce's _my parents are dead_ look, only a little more deadpan and a little less tolerant (if that was even somehow possible which it really kind of _wasn't_ ). "Yes, Miss Stark. Only _two_."

"Am I allowed to fire you, Jarvis?" Toni asked.

She swore she saw the old man smirk. "No, Miss Stark, you are _not_. You wouldn't survive three days without me. Now read your mail and eat your cookie."

That was sort of true, too.

Toni heaved out a big, deep, grumbling sigh. This was just so not fair. And yeah, okay, she wouldn't fire Jarvis even if he could: the man had changed her _diapers_ when she'd been a baby; she had to give him _some_ credit. But _still_. He could be a little nicer about it. Except he'd also sort of earned the right _not_ be be a little nicer about it because. Well. _Jarvis_.

She looked down at the piece of paper again, eyeing it warily. July 14th, the Van der Woodsen's daughter was turning seventeen. Toni had no idea why she was supposed to care.

"Do I have to go?" Toni asked.

"Yes, Miss Stark," replied Jarvis.

"Do I have to wear a _dress_?" Toni asked again. Her voice had an edge of desperation to it, because oh yeah, she knew where this was going, and she knew Jarvis, and there was _no way_ she was getting out of this god _damn_ it.

" _Yes_ , Miss Stark," Jarvis sighed. "We'll have you fitted for something appropriate."

Toni was too old to have a temper tantrum.

After all, she had a cookie to finish, first.

So she ate her cookie, and then her other cookie, swallowed them both down with a supremely haughty shake of her head, and _then_ she had a temper tantrum.

Toni's temper tantrums were something out of legend. Like out of the Norse myths, or like Zeus throwing down lightning bolts to vanquish the Titans—that was the kind of misery and rage Toni's temper tantrums were made of.

They were like nightmares, only there was no waking up.

(This was actually a gross exaggeration; Toni mostly just threw herself on the floor and kicked and screamed, but she liked to make it seem like she was something far more impressive than an angry fifteen-year-old-girl. She wasn't really helping her case, especially given that she had crumbs around the corner of her mouth. That girl, Jarvis thought fondly.)

When Toni had raged herself into exhaustion, she lay on the floor, and huffed grumpily a couple of times. This did not endear her to anyone.

"That stupid party is in two days."

"Yes, Miss Stark," said Jarvis.

"I'm not going to be allowed back in the workroom, am I?"

Jarvis seemed to consider this, but not for long enough to give Toni actual hope. "No, Miss Stark, I should think _not_. Your father would be very displeased with me if I allowed you to dismiss an event to which you have been so kindly invited."

Toni groaned into the carpet. "Just kill me _now_ ," she pleaded.

Jarvis almost smiled. He patted her head gently, and helped her up. "There we are, Miss Stark. Let's get you cleaned up, we have things to do."

And so they did.

Jarvis shoved her into the bathroom with a bottle of shampoo-conditioner, ridiculously scented soap, and more towels than she could ever have used. Toni sulked in the tub for a good two hours, if only to test her butler's patience, and then she was pulled out, stuffed roughly into an approximation of respectable clothes by the maid, and then herded into the car.

Happy was driving.

Toni looked at her hands, and very carefully did _not_ look at Happy. He was—god, he was _Happy_ , and she wanted to punch him or hug him or break him again, because that was what Toni was good at, she was good at breaking things, breaking people, but not necessarily fix them.

It was a shame Pepper wasn't around, Toni thought they would really get along.

The thing about Happy was that he was the kind of guy that Good Girls liked. He was eighteen and handsome—er, well, Toni supposed he was handsome, except that he was _Happy_ , and all she could remember him as was spotty and specky and _annoying_ —and he had a job that paid well. And so yeah, he was just this guy that Toni had accidentally pushed into the pool when she'd been a kid, and it certainly wasn't _her_ fault that he couldn't swim, was it? No, no it was _not_.

Well, maybe the part afterwards where she'd yelled at him and then kicked him had been her fault, but whatever, that part didn't matter.

What did matter was that Toni was guilty and good at breaking things but not fixing them, and she was still working on it, okay? She was totally still working on it.

She'd get it right one day.

Probably.

Happy turned around and looked at her. "Where to, Miss Stark?"

"Don't call me that, you Neanderthal, I'm so not in the mood," Toni said. "I pushed you in the pool and you nearly drowned, I think you can call me Toni, okay? Okay."

A tiny little grin flickered across his face, and Toni thought of Bruce, and Bruce's stupid hair and his stupid height and his stupid everything—the fact that he'd been the only sibling she'd ever thought she'd had, and he'd left without even saying _goodbye_.

That was the part that hurt the most.

That he hadn't said goodbye.

And yeah, okay, she should have been totally over it. It had almost been a full half-year (five months, seven days, sixteen hours, forty-three minutes and counting), and she should have been over it by now.

She should have been over a lot of things by now.

Except that she kind of wasn't.

That was a pain in the ass, if nothing else.

Toni slouched back in the seats (wow, the last time she'd been in this car, she'd been going to her mother's funeral and she'd been twelve years old. If that wasn't morbid, what _was_?), and deliberately popped all her knuckles, then her toes, then her hips, then her back. The snap was satisfying, and she felt a little more relaxed and a little less homicidal, so that was probably good.

Jarvis didn't even look at her, too used to the habit.

Just another thing Toni had picked up from her father. She really didn't know why he was so worried about her—she was nothing like her mother at all. Daddy's little girl, all the way down to her core. Even then, he still wouldn't give her the time of day, and oh god, okay, she was so not going down this road right now because it could only lead to a long night of drinking stolen liquor and then vomiting everywhere in the morning.

Toni was not her mother, and alcoholism was hereditary.

_Thanks, Dad, maybe I'll actually do this right for once. Or maybe not_.

And so that was how Toni Stark spent her day.

Shopping for clothes that she didn't want to go to a party she had no desire to be at with her butler who _also_ had no desire to be shopping for clothes because it was cutting into his knitting time (or whatever the fuck it was he did with his spare time—Toni really had no clue), and then finding a hair salon that wasn't so offended by her pale-blue head that they would take her on as a client.

_Ugh_ , Toni thought, _New Yorkers_.

_Why_ was she here, again?

Oh, right, because the school only stayed open for people who actually needed some place to sleep, and Toni wasn't one of them (except that, you know, none of them _really_ needed some place to sleep, a school for rich kids sort of counted on that). She grumbled and sat in her chair and didn't move while the stylist washed out the last dregs of her last green-blue dye job.

The stupid thing was that Toni would rather go scraggly-haired and badly dressed and alone than calling Pepper and telling her that there were plane tickets waiting at her local airport to fly her to Manhattan proper. Because while Toni was a selfish girl (starved for love and attention, come on, let's be realistic now), but she wasn't _that_ selfish.

Pepper had a home and parents and friends and a _life_ outside Toni.

And Toni, well.

Toni had a dead mother and an absent father and the memory of Bruce Wayne to keep her company, and for now that was enough. She had robots and dirty clothes that were obscenely expensive and an old butler that never let her get away with anything. Not really a life, but it would have to do for now.

(At least until she could get her hands on a bottle of gin.)

Toni tipped her head back, and let the stylist have her attention.

—

The Van der Woodsens were a very old family. Toni's mother had once been very close friends with the matriarch of the family, but that had been a long time ago, and Toni quite frankly was in no state of mind to make _friends_.

She'd smiled and said hello, hair curling to dark wisps around her face, and then she moved on.

She wore gold, long-sleeved and skin-tight but short and shimmery around her thighs, and bright red heels that were near as high as the length her hand. It matched the red slash of her smile, and Toni moved through the crowds like tree fluff caught on the breeze.

She could hide in the crowd, but Toni never was very good at hiding. It parted for her, for this girl in too-tall heels and eyes darker only than her smile, and she left them trailing in her wake wanting and confused.

This was ridiculous.

She wanted Pep.

She wanted _Bruce_.

She got through three glasses of champagne before she actually _found_ him. Which was—wait, _what_.

Toni's brain cut right off.

There was Bruce Wayne, broad-shouldered and older than she'd last seen him with lines around his eyes that shouldn't have been there. He was surrounded by tittering girls all her age or a little older, and, for god's sake, he was still wearing that suit wrong, when was he going to _learn_ —except that, wait, _why_ was Bruce Wayne in New York?

More importantly, why was Bruce Wayne in New York and she _didn't know about it_?

And Toni, being Toni, decided to take matters into her own hands.

She stomped across the room, heels clacking loudly, and she watched Bruce turn with a disturbingly charming smile on his face before he went white as paste. The smile dropped away, and Toni thought _good_ , vicious and fast. She wanted to rip him open and dump his innards out all over the floor, because she was fifteen and destroyed and _why the fuck not_?

"Well," Toni said. "Look what the cat dragged in."

"Hello, Antonia," Bruce replied. The girls around him tittered some more. Toni had no idea what was going on there, but it was disgusting and she was not drunk enough for this.

"Antonia?" she asked. She popped her hip out the same way Pepper always did when she wanted something. "Really? After everything? Awww, Brucey, don't tell me you've forgotten already!"

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and Toni felt a terrible rush of satisfaction. He wanted to play the name game? She could go there, too—he wasn't the only genius around there, and she'd learned the hard way to hit where it hurt.

What kind of fifteen year old _was_ she? The word _monster_ resonated, and Toni pushed it away in favour of smirking at him. She could be the wolf-monster Fenrir who swallowed the sun, Loki Silvertongue's half-giant demon-child.

Toni was already half-way there, anyway.

"We should catch up, Mister _Wayne_ ," Toni said. "I'd just _love_ to hear your thoughts on the new nanobot technology that Wayne industries has patented, it sounds like something I'd understand."

She paused to sneer at the girls around him. "Intelligent conversation must be _so_ hard to come by, these days."

His smile went a little sketchy around the edges, and he turned to speak at the girls around him with his face still frozen in that farce of a grin. "Excuse me, ladies, Miss Stark and I have some… business to speak about. If you'll excuse me?"

And he left them without another word, hand curling tightly around Toni's elbow. She could hear them whispering—those dumb stupid girls, did they think she was deaf?

" _That's_ Toni Stark?"

"I thought—no _way_."

"How does she know my Brucey-poo? I _swear_ he was going to ask me to dance—"

"Oh my god, Amanda, stop, you're like, _so_ wrong—"

"No, I'm not!"

And then they were out of earshot, and Bruce's fingers tightened again. He was probably going to leave finger-shaped bruises, but then, she thought a little cruelly, that was nothing new, was it?

"So," Toni said conversationally, "business, huh? Are we planning a merger, or are you just gonna nag me?"

"Toni," he said, gravel crunching between his teeth and his larynx as he spoke, as though he was caught between furious and fond. He was probably was. "What are you _doing_ here!?"

Toni knew she was hard to love and crazy as a bag of cats, but at least _she_ didn't disappear on her friends without a word. "Oh," she said, "I dunno. Got an invitation or som'un, and Jarvis said I had to come. _Bo_ -ring. But how about you? How've _you_ been, _Brucey_? How's that _douchebag_ thing working out for you? I thought you never smiled, but clearly, I was wrong. Looks like you're a _whole_ new person."

She wanted the words to eat at him; she wanted them to eat through his stomach like she'd made him drink battery acid, and she wasn't above low blows.

"It's not… like that," Bruce said. His jaw was still clenched, and Toni was _so_ over this whole thing. The alcohol sloshed fun and fizzy in her stomach, made her bolder than normal, made her push her lips out in a pout and lower her eyelids just so that her mascara-enhanced eyelashes brushed her cheeks.

Cruelty came easily to beautiful people, Toni discovered.

And tonight, Toni was one of those beautiful people.

"Really, it's not, huh?" she said. She tapped her red lips with a finger callused from too much contact with wrenches and too many nights spent with a welding hose. " _Weird_. I could'a _sworn_ I just saw _Bruce Wayne_ flirting. The girls at school would be _so_ jealous."

"Toni, seriously, I didn't—I'm not _like_ that."

Tony was all ice. "Then what _are_ you Bruce?"

"I'm…"

"An asshole. That's what you are," she said, and then her voice turned to a hiss. "You didn't even say _goodbye_ , you were just _gone_ , and then I had to deal with the whole thing all on my own, and Pep—you know Pep, she tried to keep me sane, you know how she is, she's good for people like that, but Jesus, Bruce, you were like my brother and then you were _gone_ and I was—I _am_!—so _fuckin'_ angry at you. I want to _punch_ you or something and I just—I just— _why_ didn't you say _goodbye_? You could have waited until my birthday, but you didn't and you—you _didn't even say_ _ **goodbye**_!"

Bruce looked like he had not expected that diatribe.

For that matter, _Toni_ had not expected that diatribe. She'd been holding it in for ages, for so long in the deepest depths of her brain where the feelings couldn't hurt anyone. She'd kept it so far down, she didn't know she'd been feeling it at all.

(That was a lie. Toni knew. Toni always knew.)

And she still had more to say.

"So you know what? I hope you have a _great_ fuckin' life, and lots of kids, and lots of friends, but don't look me up in the phone book. I'm not there, and I don't wanna talk to you _anyway_."

And with that, Toni spun on her stiletto, graceful as a ballerina _en pointe_ , and walked away.

She didn't hear him move at all.

But suddenly, he'd picked her up, tossed her over his shoulder, and carried her ever farther away from the party. She hadn't remembered him being able to do that—all Toni could think of was the bird-skinny fourteen-year-old she'd met four years ago, and that Bruce was definitely not _this_ Bruce. So maybe her vision was skewed, anyway.

He set her down, and looked to be about to go one of his rants, because he was giving her that _my parents are dead_ Look again, it just really wasn't pleasant. Toni held up a hand, because there were a thought coming, and she needed to wait for it to make its way through the layers of her brain.

Strange.

That's what it was.

It was strange, Toni decided. This thing, this friendship. It was strange, because Bruce was a better person what she was by far (or at least, he'd always been a better person than she by far before _tonight_ and that whole _leaving_ thing), and he had no business with a fifteen-year-old genius fuck-up; he was all _important_ now. But his eyes didn't miss anything, and he curved his shoulders around her to protect her from the prying gazes of the people inside. It was distinctly protective, and it was distinctly strange. It was strange because they hadn't spoken a single sentence to each other in months. It was strange because he'd been her adopted-brother and pseudo-father, and now she looked at him and all she could see was someone who was trying to control her.

Toni didn't mean to give him a hard time (yes, she did), but she'd grown up while he'd been gone.

(She'd had to. There's been no choice in the matter.)

And she wasn't ready to give up that hard-won growth. She was too old for it, anymore.

"Toni," he said, and she knew he was going to try to explain again. But she really, really, really didn't want to hear it, okay? And he totally should have known that, he should have known that she was too prideful and too angry to ever forgive someone abandoning her like that.

Maybe she was always going to be too prideful and too angry, and maybe she would never forgive him.

It wouldn't be the first time.

Toni shook her head. "Forget it, Bruce. I don't need to hear it, I already got the lecture from Jarvis."

"I wasn't going to lecture you," Bruce frowned, lips pulling down and making him look like someone she didn't know and, oh, _wait_ , that was _right_ , she _didn't_ know him anymore, _did_ she.

Toni saw red.

He stood there in his badly-fitting suit with his arms crossed, frowning down at her, and Toni saw red because she could see her father and her father's disappointment in the broad, sharp lines of him.

Toni was so, so _done_ with disappointment.

"I'm outta here. Call me when you decide to grow the fuck up," she said, and flipped him off as she turned around again to leave. He reached for her wrist, but she snapped it out of his reach before he could get a decent grip and _force_ her to listen to him. But frankly, Toni wasn't in the mood, and she told herself _Make it sting, Toni, make him hurt like he hurt you. He left, remember_?

And Toni had got so very, very good at hurting.

She strut back into the benefit-birthday-party-whatever-the-fuck-this-was on her tippy red heels, and proceeded to get thoroughly, happily trashed.

Girls chatted loudly around her, but the alcohol had rendered everything into a happy, blissful blur of fuzzy-or-nothing. There were pretty girls, too; one with a long tangle of wild golden-blonde hair and one who had perfect dark curls and a very red mouth with their arms around each other. Toni would kiss them both before the night was out, because why not? Why the fuck not? What could the world do to her, now? Bruce Wayne was a cocksucker and she had no time for assholes like that. She had Pepper, and Toni thought of Pepper, pretty, snarky, terrifying Pepper, and knew that none of these freaks could even ever begin to measure up.

And with Bruce Wayne around to compare to, Toni was going to have a hard time finding someone who could keep her interest long enough to actually have a good time.

Or not.

She spent the rest of the night laughing, wrapped up in expensive boys in expensive suits and beautiful girls in beautiful dresses, and she left Bruce Wayne in the dust.

_Take that_ , Toni thought viciously, and kissed the blonde girl again and again in the shadow of a pillar where no one could see.

"Why haven't I seen you before, huh?" the girl breathed into the high curve of Toni's cheek, and made a squeaky sort of noise that was really unladylike and really hot and it made Toni grin wickedly when she sucked on the girl's neck.

"Don' worry," Toni slurred. "You'll see more'a me later."

"I hope so," the girl nearly moaned.

Toni smiled against warm skin.

She could do this without him.

She could do this.

She could.

—

Toni had very little memory of the night, after that point. It was the first time that had ever happened before (but it wouldn't be the last); she knew that at some point, Jarvis had Happy practically pick her up and stuff her into the back of the limo, and they must have taken her home and put her to bed, because when she woke the next morning, she had the mother of all hangovers pounding behind her eyes.

"Jarvis," Toni croaked. "Jarvis, you there?"

"Yes, Miss Stark."

"Need… water. Or… I dunno. Head hurts."

He handed her something: a pair of pills and a glass of water, maybe, but Toni really had no clue because _everything hurt_. Every muscle in her entire body was screaming, and she was probably black and blue, and if her brain had a face, it would be making the ugliest expression in the world right then.

Hangovers were the devil made tangible, Toni moaned to herself. She knocked the pills and the water back without a thought, and then she settled back against her pillows and just looked at her butler.

Jarvis looked… old.

Jarvis looked really, really old, and Toni could see it, oh god, she could see the death hanging around him, no, no, no, that couldn't be right, it just couldn't, she wouldn't _allow_ it to be right—

"Promise me you won't die," Toni ordered. She knew it sounded like it was coming from a petulant child, and she _felt_ like a petulant child about to throw a tantrum, but oh god, oh god, oh god, she couldn't lose Jarvis, too. She couldn't. She wouldn't survive it, probably. Well, okay, she would, but, you know. Not really.

(Toni's talent for the melodramatic should have won her an Oscar. Only this wasn't melodrama, this was real worry, and Toni wasn't exactly sure what to do with that—Toni wasn't good at emotions.)

Jarvis raised a single bushy white eyebrow at her. "What would give you _that_ idea, Miss Stark?"

"Promise me, Jarvis," she insisted.

"Your breakfast will be ready when you decide to get out of bed, Miss Stark," Jarvis replied, as though the very notion of his death was preposterous, and that she was entirely ridiculous for even thinking about.

Toni grumble, and would have forgotten about it because there was _food_ , but.

_But_.

He'd never promised. Toni set it to the back of her mind and resolved to think on it later. There was bacon to be consumed, and she had a robot or twelve to build, and—

It turned out that _later_ was eight days.

Jarvis died eight days later.

Eight days.

Toni dialled emergency, and calmly told the lady at the other end of the line that she'd just found her butler dead in his bedroom.

The sound of sirens was loud in her ears.

They took him away covered in a large white sheet. That image was burned into her memory forever—Jarvis' old body covered in a sheet as they took him to the morgue, and oh god, oh god, oh godohgodoh _god_. Toni wasn't even sixteen, and she felt like an orphan. Shell-shocked, she haunted the mansion with big dark eyes in a tiny pale face for the days leading up to the funeral. She didn't even go into the workshop. She didn't do anything at all.

She sat in her bedroom and looked at her hands, and didn't move.

It was very unlike her, but the funny thing was that there was no one around to care what she did, anymore. Howard certainly wasn't, and Toni's mother was, _oops_ , dead; death was a thing that happened far too early to people who never deserved it, or so it seemed.

Which was too bad, Toni thought with a bitter smile. It probably meant that she was going to live forever, and if that wasn't ironic, what was?

The sun passed outside her window and then it was the moon, but Toni didn't notice the passing of time anymore. Twice this happened, and she didn't sleep, too busy calculating and measuring and dreaming about reversing death on in the inside of her head. Logically, there was no way to bring someone back from the dead.

But if there was anyone on earth who could outwit Death, it was Toni Stark.

She didn't figure anything out in time for the funeral.

There were no ugly black dresses waiting for her in her wardrobe, this time.

The only one she could find was the one she'd worn to her mother's funeral. Three years later, it might as well have been a shirt. She touched it, and the fabric was old and soft underneath her fingers. Not worn, but strangely comforting.

She didn't even try to put it on.

Instead, she wore the gold dress from the night she'd seen Bruce and the striking black heels, because Toni was gold and red and _alive_ , even if everyone else around wasn't. Jarvis had been the last person who had maybe really loved Toni (because Pepper barely counted, and Bruce didn't count at all anymore), and she wasn't going to go to his funeral dressed like everyone else. She kept her hair down and dark, and painted her nails the colour of horror stories and melancholy.

And she was striking in the mirror.

She didn't colour her lips.

In fact, she wore no make-up at all.

_No armour for this girl_ , Toni thought to herself. _Not today. No one will be there, and I can cry all I want_.

But of course, she wouldn't.

It was a quiet affair. Sunny, too, which Toni thought was ridiculously out of character. Jarvis had been all backtalk and politely-masked sarcasm, and the sky should have reflected that. Everything should have reflected that.

The ceremony was short. There was no one there at all, except Toni and Happy. Her father hadn't even shown up, and she swore then and there that when the old man died, she was going to spit on his grave. So much for _family_. Happy put his arm around her shoulders. She didn't shake him off.

(Sometimes she just needed someone, and Happy was almost Bruce, wasn't he?)

And Bruce's butler was there. Alfred. Toni looked at him, and he looked at her.

"Miss Stark," he said.

"Hello, Alfred," she said. "Bruce decided not to come?"

Alfred inclined his head. "Master Bruce thought that disturbing you would result only in disaster. I have come to say goodbye for the both of us."

Well, _that_ was true.

It wasn't fair, Toni thought. Alfred didn't really have friends—he dealt with fucking _Bruce_ on a daily basis, and he and Jarvis had had something that might have been considered friendship, if it was only based on dealing with two impossible teenagers (and they did that spooky twin-talk-thing, too, which had always freaked Toni out and made Bruce laugh and okay, yes, _yes_ , she missed Bruce, and he was _supposed to be here_ ).

Toni tried for a smile, but it probably came out like a desperate grimace. It felt last-ditch and worn on her face, like her muscles had forgotten how to pull up properly and stay there.

It fell off her face as fast as she'd tried to put it on.

Alfred patted her shoulder gently, but that didn't make it okay. He paid his respects, and then he left. It still wasn't okay.

Nothing was going to make it okay, not now.

Toni wrapped her arms around herself, glittering brightly in the sunshine. She was a mess in a dress, but hey, at the very least, she was hot. It was three days before the end of July, and August stretched out long and heady before her, and Jarvis was dead, and all she had to head home to was dust and empty halls.

Howard was maybe never coming back.

Toni looked down at the fresh grass they'd laid over her butler's grave. Happy had gone to get the car, and she was all alone at the grave for a little while.

"God damn it," she told his headstone. "God _damn_ it, Jarvis! You didn't promise. You were supposed to _promise_ , but you never did, and now you're dead."

She didn't sink to the ground.

She just stood there, and glared down with her arms still wrapped around herself. It was a nice graveyard, as graveyards went, but she was probably never going to come back. She hadn't visited her mother's grave once in three years, because Toni didn't so hot when it came to saying goodbye.

Actually, she was total shit at saying goodbye.

(See: Bruce Wayne.)

And there were a lot of things that Toni could do, now. She had a month before she had to go back to school—if she went back to school at all, because fuck that place and everything it had ever meant to her—and she was going to run New York for a while.

Without Jarvis there to temper, she could be Antonia Emilia Stark, wild-child genius-girl with her dark eyes and her dark hair, and she could kiss who she wanted and get drunk and _ruin_ things.

She could _ruin_ the Stark name if she so chose.

After all, what could they do?

The company could get stuffed.

She wasn't twenty-one yet.

Her heart had shrunk to a small ball of dry ice underneath her sternum again, and she packed the memories of Jarvis away along with all the memories of her mother. She'd already chucked the memories of Howard out the window, so this was nothing new, and she was a fifteen-year-old who had access to too much money to spend in a lifetime.

And Toni thought, _yeah, okay, I can do this, I can ruin it, ruin it all, and they can't stop me, because who are they to tell me what to do?_

(She was trying to kill herself. She just didn't know it yet.)

Happy brought the car around.

"Home, Miss Stark?"

"Whatever, Hap. Take me home, and take the rest of the day off," she said.

So he did.

The drive was a blur of blue and green outside the window. Toni's lashes were wet. It must have been raining inside the limo—she was going to have to get Happy to fix that. Or maybe she'd just buy a new one. No one wanted a limo that leaked.

There was no one to comment that the sky was blue as a robin's egg.

Yeah, fuck this so hard.

But Toni didn't stumble when she got out of the limo, not even when she found Bruce sitting on the door-stoop. He looked like he'd been sitting there a while, but he stood up when he caught sight of her. He looked a million miles away, and Toni stared at him.

"I hate you," she said. "I really, really hate you, Bruce."

And then she punched him weakly in the shoulder, and he gathered her up, and practically carried her inside. She curled against him like a kitten, and they spent the afternoon like they used to, watching bad movies and eating stale popcorn. She didn't kick him out even though she probably should have, and he didn't push for an explanation even though _he_ probably should have.

But Toni and Bruce were both too smart to get caught in _that_ rat trap.

For an afternoon, they were eleven and fourteen again, and she punched him, and he did that thing with his mouth where he actually almost smiled, and even though they were missing their third part, Toni thought that this could have been way worse.

"I'm still pissed at you," she told him around a mouthful of terrible popcorn. "Like, seriously, what the fuck was that."

"When did you start swearing like a sailor?" Bruce asked in reply.

Toni punched him for good measure.

"Ow," he said, and Toni didn't laugh even though she wanted to. Her throat was still too tight, and this could have been way worse, but there was no Jarvis to heckle and no Pepper to comb her fingers through her hair and call her crazy.

There was nothing else.

"When you left," Toni said lightly, and licked her fingers of excess butter and salt.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"No, you're not. Don't even pretend you are. You left, and you're not sorry. Don't act like I don't know you, Brucey. We've been friends too long."

This was true, too.

He put his arm around her, and for a terrifying second, Toni thought he was going to kiss her. But he had more sense than she did, and he just set his chin on top of her head. She punched him in the ribs.

" _Ow_ , why are you always so _violent_?" Bruce demanded, rubbing at his bruised side.

"I'm sorry, but you should totally be used to it by now, because _someone_ needs to be violent with you," she told him. "It keeps you from getting too big-headed. Plus, no one else ever gets to punch you, not really, because, like, you're _you_ —I bed you have like a million bodyguards in Gotham, that place is stupid dangerous—so I have to do it extra-hard for all the criminals that don't get the chance, y'know?"

(If only she knew how wrong she was.)

It actually made him laugh.

That was good and bad all at once, and Toni wanted to hide away from him and from this and from being his friend, because being Bruce Wayne's friend was _hard_. Not that saying that being friends with _her_ was any easier; it was probably why they'd gravitated towards each other in the first place, because they were both hard to live with and harder to read.

But Bruce was the good one who the kind of philanthropist who probably fought evil for a living, and Toni was the bitch who drank too much and spat blood off buildings and wore gold to funerals because she craved attention like an addict.

They were very different people.

In a lot of ways, it was kind of a miracle one of them hadn't killed the other yet.

"When are you headed back to Gotham?" she asked, mostly to make conversation and keep him talking, because she was still annoyed that he didn't have the decency to come to her butler's funeral (okay, that sounded weird, but really wasn't, because Jarvis had slipped them both sweets when Alfred wasn't looking and then promptly lectured them about brushing their teeth when he was in earshot, and he'd been—he'd been _there_ ), and she was still annoyed that he was someone else when her back was turned.

Or at least, when he thought she wasn't looking.

Fuck him for that.

Fuck him for a lot of things.

"Tonight," he said.

"Wow, so I was spot-on a week ago. Asshole," Toni replied. The sarcasm slipped into her voice without either of them really noticing. This was just how they were. How they'd always been. Temporary pain. She would feel again when he was gone. "When?"

"I should have left three hours ago."

"Don't even give me your _my parents are dead_ look, because fuck you, so are mine," Toni said delicately, because she was totally expecting that look to show up any second now. "It's not my fault I'm impossible to leave."

(Except, yeah, leaving Toni Stark was what Bruce Wayne did best.)

"My _what_?"

"I dunno, you have this one look, your eyes go all dead and serious like you should own the world or whatever, and it just screams _my parents are dead_ , and, um, it's kinda a downer. Just saying," Toni shrugged.

Delicacy? What was that?

This time, Bruce actually _did_ snort aloud. "You're ridiculous."

"And yet, here you are," Toni replied. "Jarvis, tell him—"

She stopped, and ground her teeth together. She was going to have to break that habit, because god, god, anything to keep her mind off of it, anything at all, anything, anything.

"Come to Gotham with me," Bruce said, instead of pointing out that she was talking to a dead man. She was probably going to be doing it for a while, and at least Bruce was more delicate than she was when it came to dead people.

"Are you _crazy_? Fuck no!" Toni shot back, given momentary reprieve. "That place is a _cesspool_ , I don't even know how you stand it—"

"It's home," he said, shrugging.

Toni thought about it, and realized that school was the only home she had.

She was going to have to make her own home somewhere else, and soon. She didn't think she could back and stay long-term, because then there would be no one to pick her up and scold her and make her eat and make her sleep—Pepper did that at school (Bruce had done it first), and Jarvis did it at home (had done it, god, god, she was really going to have to get a handle on that), but beyond that, there was no one.

Toni wasn't exactly the type to make friends.

She had followers, not friends.

Like Voldemort, except that was a shitty comparison, because Toni was totally _not_ the Darkest Wizard of All Time. She was some weird combination of Hermione and Ginny and maybe Luna on a bad day.

"You should probably go, then," Toni said quietly.

He made a grunting sort of sound, and extricated himself from her. And that, that was why Bruce was never really going to settle down with anyone, she thought. Because there was always something to do, always somewhere to be, always something to buy, someone to double-cross—and yeah, okay, maybe that last one was just her, but that was why they were both so messed up. They had things to do, and the rest of the world didn't.

Genius-kid problems.

He ruffled her hair as he went.

He could show himself out.

Toni wasn't about to move, not now. She was too tired, too almost-broken, too close to bleeding internally, and he—he wasn't supposed to leave. Two X's, Brucey, she thought, and gently closed her eyes.

She didn't hear the door when it closed behind him.

In a lot of ways, she was glad she didn't.

Toni could grieve alone, now.

But the tears never came, and she was left alone in the dusty, empty house to try to begin to put herself back together.

Toni took a slow deep breath, and began.

Sadly, it turned out that putting herself back together involved taking herself apart down to her very bones.

Fuck this, fuck that, fuck you, fuck me, fuck, fuck, _fuck_ —

She danced on tables with girls whose name's she didn't know, but she remembered the blonde and the brunette, and they kissed and drank and smoked. And the press took pictures of all three of them, three ethereal creatures that ran the city at four in the morning with headlines like STARK HEIR GONE WILD and END OF STARK EMPIRE and STARK DISINHERITS DAUGHTER?

Toni read them all in nothing but tiny black panties the morning after, and laughed them off.

Poor little media-tech-types, they hadn't a fucking clue. Howard didn't particularly care what she did—he hadn't particularly cared much about anything since her mother had died, and she was just baggage that he didn't want to care for.

Toni still didn't know anyone's name, but she drank expensive coffee with the girls and smoked a lot of hash with the boys and tried a couple of other, harder drugs that made her head spin and left with her deep dark shadows beneath her eyes. She fucked one of them, a boy who had glazed eyes and might have been dripping-gold sunshine incarnate, and she thought it was a heady thing, a terrible thing, a beautiful thing.

New York hated her and loved her in equal measure, because she was entertainment and life in a grey city with high rises reaching into the sky. She was an inkblot on the map of the rich Upper East Side and they all couldn't stand to look at her except when she was in the middle of one of their parties, shining like a light bulb.

And she didn't care what anyone said, anymore.

She had other things to do.

Toni still hadn't gone into her workroom in the basement, and once in a while she wondered if the dust was beginning to collect.

There was too much pain in there, still.

Toni didn't build, only broke.

August passed in a maelstrom of sex and drugs and more sex, beautiful people that Toni didn't know and didn't want to know, late mornings and later nights.

Sometimes she didn't sleep at all, and watched the sun rise just because she could.

She thought of Pepper and Bruce, and ached inside.

She filched a credit card from the safety-deposit box before she left for school, and didn't bring anything with her. Toni had already decided that when Howard died (and it couldn't be long, now, because god, everything Toni _touched_ died on her), she was going to burn this place to the ground; it and everything in it, and let the ghosts in that place finally rest.

Or maybe not.

She didn't know much of anything, anymore.

Happy drove her back to school, but didn't look her in the eye.

Toni wanted to be mad, but couldn't dredge up the energy.

"See you at Christmas," she said.

"Yes, Miss Stark," he said.

"Oh, yeah, Hap?"

"Yeah?"

"I have a friend I think you should meet," Toni said, and sort of grinned. "You'd like her. Name's Pepper—er, Virginia. Pepper. Whatever. She might be coming for Christmas. Don't fuck it up, okay? She's my best friend."

And this time Happy did look at her, and Toni thought he looked old, too, but not old in a bad way like Jarvis had—he looked old like maybe she'd never known him at all. She probably hadn't, for that matter, because he was just Happy, and she was just Toni, and they'd never been friends at all.

"Sure, Miss Stark," Happy said, and grinned right back.

And Toni thought _okay, this is okay. This is okay_.

She waved over her shoulder, and stepped back into school.

And there was Pepper, standing with her arms crossed and fury all over her face like she'd just been _waiting_ for Toni to appear so she could give her one of Pep's infamous dressind-downs.

"I saw the papers," Pep said, voice like ice. "And you didn't even _call_ me?"

Toni looked at her, and actually smiled.

"Don't, Pep. Don't start."

"Toni, I swear to god—"

"Seriously, Pepper," Toni said. "Don't start. Just… don't."

Pepper looked at her for a long, long time.

"Fine," she said shortly. "You're helping me bring this stuff upstairs."

"That's what you have minions for!" Toni complained as Pepper indicated the neatly-organized pile of luggage that looked like it probably weighed a million and two pounds, knowing Pepper's penchant for bringing more books that the library had. "I am not your minion!"

"Of course you are. Where's your stuff, anyway? We can bring it up, too—"

Toni cut her off with a splinter-smile and the jagged edges of her teeth. "I told you, Pep. Don't start. Really. Don't. I don't need it."

"You always need it," Pepper said softly.

"Bruce needs it. Not me," Toni said.

And with that, she reached for one of Pepper's bags, and started lugging it up the stairs.

Pepper might have seen the papers and the headlines, but she didn't know. She didn't know anything. She didn't know about Bruce's new personality or the drugs or anything. She didn't know.

And Toni was willing to do just about anything to keep it that way.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_tbc_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy thanksgiving, those of you in Canadaland! :)


	3. the antidote for irony

—

.

.

.

.

.

Things were… not so great, after that.

Toni spent her time cooped up her in lab and rarely left. She knew that Pepper and some of her favourite teachers were worried, but what could they do? At best they could force her to eat and sleep.

That seemed to happen a lot, with Toni.

The not eating and not sleeping thing, anyway. The not-going-to-class thing was just par for the course that was the Stark heir; she took the exam, aced it without trying, and then went back to whatever it was she'd been doing in the first place.

She didn't tell them about the shakes and the worries and the nightmares, because those were things that had no business in Toni Stark's life, anyway.

She wasn't the girl who was afraid of the dark, no matter what the dark things whispered at night. She wasn't the girl to take things personal, not the girl to take things too easy, not the girl to take the shit the world threw at her.

Because she was like a monkey.

 _Throw shit at me, and I'll throw it right back_ , Toni thought.

She couldn't bring Jarvis back from the dead. She didn't _want_ to bring her mother back from the dead. There was only so much any one person could do, and Toni understood biology. Once something died, there was no plausible to even begin to bring it back to life.

She'd always hated Frankenstein, anyway.

So she'd stopped trying, and moved on to better projects.

AI technology.

She could do that. She could totally, totally do that. It would take, like, a decade of work, maybe, but she could totally do it. Or maybe half a decade if she was drunk, because being drunk seemed to be conducive to Toni's thinking processes. It slowed everything down just enough that she didn't have to worry about forgetting details (not that she ever did in the place, but _whatever_ ).

Whatever, the point was that she totally had it down and it was something she could definitely get done. She had the motivation, now—not having Jarvis around to scold her was a little lonely.

Pepper, on the other hand, thought that this was one of the worst ideas Toni had ever had.

"Are you _crazy_ , Toni? There's a reason AI tech hasn't seriously been attempted before, it's just—it's not possible!"

"I'm not crazy," Toni said absently. "My mother had me tested."

(She was always telling _someone_ that.)

Somehow, Toni thought that Pepper wasn't surprised in the least. She had make-up down, now, and she understood how to work a room—but she still couldn't match Pepper for sheer _scary_ , and it was funny and sad because Toni was pretty sure she was never going to match Pep on that level.

It was good, though.

This way, she could still hire Pep when she got the fuck out of dodge.

And really, Toni didn't know what she was waiting for—she could blow this joint any time she wanted, end up back in New York. She could go to MIT, that wouldn't be a problem, she was Howard's kid, right? She'd take the SAT, and then she'd go to MIT and then she'd wait for Pepper to graduate and then they could totally get married and it would be _great_.

Except that Toni was pretty sure Pepper never wanted to marry her, and really, she couldn't blame her at all.

Honestly, _Toni_ wouldn't have wanted to marry Toni. Why on earth would she blame Pep for the same thing? All Pepper had ever been was good.

Also, Toni was pretty sure that if she introduced Pep to Happy, it would be the end of any other relationship for either of them.

These were the kind of things Toni thought about when she was standing in the shower. It was the only time she'd allow herself to be dumb and stupid and girly and not work on things that might benefit or destroy humankind—showers were her girly time.

Anyway.

So that was kind of the end of Plan B.

Toni didn't really have a Plan C.

There'd never been a need for Plan C.

So… now what?

Toni slipped out of the shower and toweled off. It was a strange thought—did she even really need a Plan C? Well, she supposed, she wasn't one to do things with plans, normally, but the thing was that not many people could stand Toni. In fact, there were a lot of days when _Toni_ couldn't stand Toni.

So people Plans were probably a good thing, on her count.

The problem was that creating another Plan involved actually meeting someone else, and Toni didn't really want to do that. It would involve work, and personal investment, and let's be real, okay; Toni was not good at either of those things. She didn't do that whole kissing ass thing.

Not even to Bruce. Maybe to Pepper a little bit, but that was Pepper and Toni was prepared to kiss ass when it came to Pepper, at the very least.

Besides.

She _had_ a Bruce (even if said dude was a huge douche who did stupid things that only made her want to hit him and who lived in a different city despite her very best efforts).

She _had_ a Pepper (even if said lady was probably going to command militaries one day).

Toni didn't want another Bruce or another Pepper, she just wanted Bruce and Pepper. That was it. She didn't think it was too much to ask to have them at her every beck and call, was it? She loved them. They loved her.

Mostly, she just wanted them to be around.

She didn't know how that was going to work, though, what with Bruce in Gotham.

It was such a _pain_.

(And this, Toni would realize later, was her almost-sixteen-year-old-self trying to be normal. This was her trying to concentrate on something that wasn't home and empty New York mansions and the fact that her father hadn't even come back for his butler's funeral. This was her doing whatever it was she could to build something that could _actually_ be a home in someone else so that she didn't have to be alone—because that was what normal was, normal was not being alone. She didn't do _alone_ very well, did she; she always came back from it a little left of sane.)

So there it was. Her Plan A was a douchebag, her Plan B wasn't interested, and, well, _there was no Plan C_. What was she supposed to do with that?

The only thing she could do with that was…

Well, go with it.

Toni figured she could do that. She could go with it. She could make it okay. Yeah, she'd probably have to build herself a mate, and _that_ make take a while, but hey, it would mean she could at least use the AI tech more than once. But, _ew_ , she'd have to program in a personality, and really, of the three men she'd had semi-regular contact with, Bruce was probably the most normal (oh god, _how_ even was that possible? _How_ was that even _possible_ , honestly, Toni didn't even really want to know).

To take stock: one was dead, one was her father, and one was across the country.

That was not the greatest ratio in the history of forever, Toni was pretty sure.

Okay, so there were no supervillains involved. That could have made the projections significantly worse—the betting pool probably would have been a lot larger if there had been, and with Toni's luck? She'd probably accidentally program the AI to blow the Empire State building up, and that would be… not good.

Well, that was nothing new.

There was probably a reason Pepper kept warning her that the AI tech was going to be the death of her; that one day she was really going to regret it and rue the day she'd ever been born, but Toni pretty much did that all the time, so she figured she didn't have anything to lose at this point.

Basically, everyone sucked and Toni needed to build herself a boyfriend who wouldn't try to take over the world.

That would have been Plan C if Toni had ever gotten around to naming it.

Except it took her all of two weeks to forget about and move onto more interesting prospects, so that made it sort of moot. It was late November, suddenly (where had the time gone?), and everything outside was turning grey. Toni loved autumn, she really did; the springtime of death and all that. And when everything turned red-gold and the crunch of leaves under her boots—that was the best.

But that never lasted long, and she had to wait the greyness out.

Sometimes, just before Toni went to bed, she could see New York's glinting lights out of the corners of her eyes. She'd press her face into her pillow and take deep, slow breaths to will them away.

(Mybe she was crazy. Healthy people didn't see city lights and cringe.)

"Hey, Pep?"

"Hm?"

"Are you still coming for New Years?"

Toni was expecting an exasperated sigh and the whole _holidays are family time, Toni_ rant that Pep had had down for years now. She understood, really, she did—Pepper had a family that loved her and wanted to spend time with her and needed her.

But Toni needed Pepper, too.

(Toni needed a lot of things.)

It was selfish.

Then again, Toni had never claimed to be anything less. Selfish, bitchy, impossible-to-live-with… the list went on, she was pretty sure Jarvis had left a list somewhere in the mansion—

She winced, but pretended she hadn't.

And so when what she got was a crooked sort of half-grin, she nearly took a step back in surprise. Pepper did not do launching-and-tackling-to-the-ground, that was Toni thing, but she did something that could have been an imitation of it. They toppled backwards onto Toni's bed, legs tangling up, and Pepper looped her arms around Toni's shoulders and laughed into her hair.

"…What are you doing."

"You're a dweeb, Toni. Of course I'm coming for New Years, I'm not leaving you alone—do you want to come stay with me for Christmas? My parents will understand, they always do."

Toni went still and lax in her best friend's grip, and tucked up into her. It was an easy thing, as easy as it was with Bruce; Toni was just small, and people were always tucking her away and trying to protect her and she loved them, she did, but they made her _crazy_ with it, sometimes.

"It's okay, Pep," Toni said softly. "I'll be okay for Christmas."

She wanted to say she was lying and that Pepper should force her to come so that she _wouldn't_ be all alone in that dead big house in that dead big city, but she didn't. Family time.

Toni could understand that.

Pepper sighed into the top of her head. "You're impossible."

"I know," Toni replied.

She thought she could feel Pepper smile.

This was good. This was okay. She could do this, she could do this, she could do this, she _could_ —or, well, maybe she couldn't, but whatever, she was going to do it anyway. She didn't have a choice.

Howard probably wouldn't be home for Christmas. Toni couldn't even remember the last time she'd spoken to him face-to-face—the most Jarvis had gotten out of her was an irregular phone call where both she and her father had listened to static for ten minutes after saying _hello_.

Somehow, she couldn't bring herself to care.

The days passed.

Toni continued to be absolutely definitely not over Jarvis' death, but she'd gotten pretty good at hiding it and the times that Pepper rescued her from shaking quietly in the bathroom slowly reduced from daily to weekly, and it seemed that things were getting better.

Maybe they were, on the outside.

On the inside, Toni was still buried in the rubble of the hurricane of emotions that had torn down the fragile bits of her that she'd build up. But Toni was her father's daughter (always, always, always Daddy's Little Ironbrand), and she set about to fixing up her insides as she would anything else.

She cauterized the wounds and tidied the inside of her own head until there was nothing left but the quiet hum of engines and generators and the lightning-quick firing of neurons in her brain as she hummed her way through writing quantum physics on a chalk-board in her lab.

Toni came out three hours later, covered in chalk dust and swaying drunkenly and feeling comparatively better.

Strange, that.

It was like she'd bled it out, only she hadn't—she'd written it out in chalk and left it there, and maybe no one would see it except the janitors before they washed it away. She'd left an empty bottle of vodka down there, too, but that was something different. Pepper looked her up and down, and didn't say a word.

Toni was okay with that.

She was getting to be okay with a lot of things, these days.

They didn't talk about the pink bottle of vodka Toni kept under her bed for emergencies—they _certainly_ didn't talk about how there were three empty ones, already. This was most probably because Pepper didn't have a clue, otherwise there would be no pink vodka and no pink fuzzies and Toni _liked_ the pink fuzzies.

They made things easier and harder all at once.

Talking was harder. Cleaning up her insides was easier. Things balanced, Toni figured blearily.

Everything eventually balanced.

—

Toni was not okay for Christmas.

Toni wore expensive clothes and crashed someone else's Christmas party, sloshed and giggling and tipping over on her stupidly high heels. She wore short jackets and shorter skirters, and she was dumb and easy and she had everything she could have ever wanted.

New York loved her.

Toni loved New York in return.

She sketched out on the bathroom floor on harder drugs than weed and the burn of alcohol down her throat. But it was pretty much the same thing, right? She vomited in some girl's closet once, and managed to make it out of the place unscathed. She danced and laughed and looked dead sexy but thankfully not sexy dead because that would have been unfortunate.

This was Toni Stark at her very finest.

And sometimes she caught herself scanning whichever ridiculous party she'd found herself at for a badly-fitted suit and a stupidly cut jaw line, but she didn't find him. He probably had better things to do than play nice at parties with little girls—hell, _she_ had better things to do than play nice at parties with little girls.

But it was so easy to lose herself in the lights and sounds and the glamour of this city that she didn't even mind the faux-smiles and the back-stabbing bitches that graced its dirty streets.

Toni thought of the rest of the world, and wondered what it thought of her.

 _Did_ it even think of her?

Probably not.

Or maybe it did.

Maybe it thought of her father and his weapons and the death that ate along the highly-pressed seams of his suit. Maybe it thought of her on her spindly heels and her thigh-length shirts and her belts and her gold and her red and thought _better luck next time_. Maybe it thought of the death that ate at Toni, too.

Maybe it wondered if she wondered about it.

She shook it off.

Metaphysics weren't really her thing, anyway.

Toni was a technical girl.

She didn't wonder if the world needed to breathe.

Time did funny things when Toni was alone, though. The sun never quite was where it should have been in the sky, and she couldn't always tell what day it was. Nighttime she understood because the sky got all dark and New York turned to brightness—that was when it was time to go out!—but sometimes she worked through it and forgot.

She'd wake up in the lab, bones aching, having completely forgotten where she was. She'd take a shot of vodka, and then she'd work herself into exhaustion all over again and this? This wasn't living; this was waiting, only she could barely remember what she was waiting for.

This house was too big and too full of ghosts. Toni didn't think she could stay here much longer without breaking something precious. A little left of sane, she thought, with shaking fingers. She traced out something complex in the frost on the window, and then watched it melt away.

Her phone rang from far, far away.

"Mmm… 'lo?" Toni said.

" _Where_ are _you!?_ " came Pepper's furious voice.

Toni thought _oh, oh god, is it New Year's already, oh god, she's gonna skin me alive, she is, I'm so done, I'm dead, bury me now and pretend that this whole thing never happened_.

"I—I'm on my way. Or, um, Happy is, he'll be there in a little bit, the roads are like ice, it's shitty out here, I mean, c'mon, Pep, this is New York—"

Pepper sighed. Toni could hear the disappointment in it and it itched at the back of her eyes, in a spot that she couldn't quite get to but knew was there all the same. It was a terrible feeling.

Worse, Toni was still three-quarters of the way to black-out drunk, and that was _probably_ not the greatest way to welcome Pepper Potts to New York City.

"I'll call you back, don't worry Pep, he'll be there in a bit. Love you, bye!" and Toni snapped her phone shut and dialled Happy's number as fast as she could hit the speed-dial.

"You need to go to the airport right now," she said in a rush.

" _What?_ " he asked. " _Now_?"

"Yes, now, Pepper's at the airport and I'm—I'm kinda—you're my driver, you're supposed to do things for me!"

He sighed, too, and Toni thought _yeah, they're gonna get married and have like a million babies and it's going to be gross, why do I even do such nice things for such terrible people_.

And this was Toni being generous.

(She hadn't overloaded her quota of temper tantrums on Happy this month, yet. He totally owed her.)

" _Alright_ ," he said wearily. " _Toni, you know I'm not Jarvis, right?_ "

Toni's mouth snapped shut. She nodded, and then remembered that he couldn't see that, so she opened her trap again and tried for words. "Yeah, Hap, I—I know."

" _I don't think you do_ ," he sounded frustrated.

Toni tried valiantly not to care. It worked, but only a little. "No, Hap, I do know. And y'know how I know? Because that old man loved me, and you don't. So I know, okay, I get the difference. Just go—go pick up Pep, and then when she leaves, we'll talk about, I don't know, getting me a new driver or something."

" _No, Toni, that's not_ —"

She hung up on him before he could say anything else.

Well, there was nothing for it.

She needed to get sober, and that meant water. Cold water. Dunking her head in ice water, in fact. Add a really cold shower and some greasy-ass food, and she would be right as rain.

That was what they wanted, right?

That was what they all wanted.

And yeah, okay, Toni was shit at giving people what they wanted because she was a selfish bitch, and like, _how_ many times had she had this conversation with herself, it had to be getting up into the thousands at this point, _she was a selfish bitch_ , she didn't care about anyone or anything except that she did, she _did_ , that was the real problem, she _did_ care.

Not that she was ever going to tell anyone, but whatever.

It was a thing.

Toni turned the shower on to ice, and stepped in.

She screeched. "GODDAMN IT, MOTHERFUCKER, I HATE—"

The phone rang again.

This was _really_ not her day. Toni shivered under the icy water, hair slicking down against the sides of her throat, curls dripping wet—she really needed to get that AI thing working, she needed someone to field her calls. Or just Pepper, except that Pepper would never take well to being a secretary, she was too busy scaring everyone into obedience.

"GOD, JUST LEAVE A MESSAGE, THAT'S WHAT IT'S THERE FOR—" Toni shrieked as the phone rang into voicemail. Whoever it was probably hung up just as the recorded _you've reached H. Stark, please leave a message after the beep_ ended, and she groaned.

She was just going to kill everything.

Toni stayed in the shower for half an hour, and came out with her lips blue. She wrapped herself in a towel—goddamn, she needed to hire someone to do the laundry, she couldn't go on like this—and trudged to her bedroom to glare at the phone. It didn't instantly burst into flames the way she wanted it to. It just sat there and blinked innocently at her.

Toni sighed, and hit the button to let the message play.

The machine crackled to life.

Silence, for a moment. There was nothing but static.

Then someone took a deep breath. " _Hey, Ironbrand. It's your Pop. When you get this, you should call me. You know the number_."

It beeped, and then went silent.

Toni smiled nastily.

"Sure, daddy, I _definitely_ will."

She deleted the message, and never looked back.

Toni found underwear and a relatively-clean, darkly faded t-shirt ( _relatively_ , okay, it was better than nothing, it had only been on her floor for what, three days? Something like that, anyway. Point was. Relatively clean). She slipped into them and sashayed out, hair still dripping wet. She probably looked absolutely ridiculous, and couldn't bring herself to care at all.

Dear old _Pop_ could _choke_ on it.

She had better things to do.

Toni didn't bother putting anything else on. Pepper had seen in her less, and Happy—well, whatever, they were definitely not interesting in each other and that was okay, too. She flopped down on the couch, flicked the TV on, and let it take her away.

It let her not-think for a while.

And maybe, Toni thought, this was where Plan A crashed into Plan B and sort of ruined everything—because half an hour later, Pepper stomped through the mansion's front door, dragging Happy and fucking _Bruce_ behind her.

Pepper dumped them both in front of Toni, dusted her hands off, and _glared_.

"You have some _explaining_ to do, _Antonia_ ," she said.

And Toni?

Yeah, Toni was in trouble.

"I didn't invite him!" she practically yelled, waving her arm grandly in Bruce's direction. "I did _not_!"

Pepper glowered. "I _know_ you didn't, Toni. _I_ did. Imagine my surprise when I got a call from dear old Bruce that you'd been spotted in some dingy nightclub with some girl between your _legs_!"

"I was… drunk?" Toni tried weakly.

"YOU ARE _SIXTEEN_ , TONI," Pepper screeched, and Toni had a terrible feeling that if Happy wasn't holding Pep back, she'd be shaking her by the shoulders so hard that her teeth and her brain would have rattled in their respective holdings, and wouldn't have that been such a _shame_. "WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET THAT IT'S NOT— YOU CAN'T JUST _DO_ THINGS LIKE THAT!"

Toni whimpered something that might have been _help_ , but no one paid her any attention.

And Pepper continued. "OH MY GOD, HOW ARE YOU EVEN GOING TO LIVE WITHOUT ME, I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH YOU—!"

"Give her a break, Virginia," Bruce said, quietly. It cut through the room like a knife, and Toni was prepared for Pepper to turn her fury on _Bruce_ (because honestly, that was basically the most hilarious thing Toni had ever had the privilege to witness), but she didn't.

Instead, Pep's shoulders slumped, and she just looked at Toni like she was looking for some redeeming factor in her but.

Ha.

Toni would have told anyone who asked: redeeming features of Toni Stark?

Not existent.

She was like the antithesis of _redeeming features_ ; hi, there were girls and boys and alcohol and Toni was pretty good at all those things, and also soldering things together with a blowtorch, she was good at that, too—but she. Well. She wasn't the greatest at being nice and playing nice and knowing when to _shut her fucking mouth_.

But maybe that was part of the growing process.

Or maybe that was just Toni Stark.

Probably both.

So that was a thing.

"Let us in, it's cold," Pepper said, and Toni sort of blindly moved out of the way so that Pep could rush past her (just like usual). Hap was next, and he kind of nodded at her, too, and he followed Pepper inside and then suddenly it was Bruce and Toni and this could have been less awkward, she was pretty sure.

"Uh. Hi," Toni said.

"Am I allowed in?" asked Bruce.

Toni's face pulled into a grimace. "I'd rather you not," she said, but she also grabbed him around the waist and pressed her face into his chest and the air was icy against her legs but this? This was okay. This was okay.

"What are you doing," Bruce said. "You're going to freeze."

She was only going to kill Pepper a little bit.

"Yeah, well, you're a dumbass. And I hate you. So there," she muttered into his shirt.

Toni thought that if he had been anyone else except Bruce, he would have laughed. But he wasn't anyone else, he was Bruce, and so he wasn't and he didn't. Stupid Bruce.

But he did pick her up and sling her over his shoulder like a goddamn sack of potatoes, and Toni screeched _really loudly_.

No one paid her any attention, though.

(Really not new, with this group.)

Bruce deposited her on the couch—practically on top of Pepper, _thanks so much, asshole_ , Toni thought—and flopped down next to them. Hap was on the floor, poking at the carefully-constructed castle-of-empty-alchol-bottles that Toni had been working on steadily for a week.

"Don't _touch_ that!" Toni squawked. "That's important research—!"

It teetered a little, and Hap scrambled backwards just in time to avoid the castle crashing all around his ears. There were bottles everywhere suddenly, and though none broke, Toni groaned and Pepper and Bruce just sighed.

"Oh, God, Hap, why do you touch _everything_? See, this is why I pushed you in the pool, I was waiting 'til the end of break to ruin it, it was gonna be so good—Pep, why is he here, I only invited you, remind me to never invite you again 'cos you seem to come with clingers and I am so not down with that—"

Pepper shook her head, and mostly looked bored. "Harold's nice, Toni, and Bruce is our best friend!"

Toni caught the hesitation, though. Plus the slight rush of colour in Pep's cheeks… _called it_ , Toni thought, and grinned wickedly. _When they get married, I better get a present or something, because I_ _totally_ _deserve it after all the shit they've put me through_.

(She conveniently forgot all the shit she put _them_ through on a more-or-less daily basis. She'd never asked that they stayed—they just sort of did. Except Bruce, of course. But Toni didn't want to think about Bruce leaving, because it would just make her mad.)

"So… what now?"

This was a decent question, though none of them quite who posed it.

"Jenga?"

"Ew, no, that's the least okay game in this house."

"A movie."

"Not everyone is as boring as you are, Bruce."

"Strip poker?"

" _No_."

"Poo. You ruin everything, Pepper."

"No, I'm just realistic. No one wants to see your skinny, freckled behind, Toni."

"Aw, but it's so _pretty_! Seriously, have you seen me naked, I am _hot_ as fuck—"

"Can we not talk about this anymore?"

"What, is my ass not good enough for you, Hap?"

"No, it's just—"

"Leave him alone, Toni."

"Why do you two _always_ ruin my fun?! I mean seriously, you two never let me get a word in, and you ruin my fun, and _ugh_ , why am I even _friends_ with you—"

"Because your fun is usually dangerous. And you talk more than any of us."

"Shut _up_ , Bruce."

And so Toni had the only solution that was a varying level of acceptable between them. And really, it wasn't even acceptable at all—it was just the one that made the most sense. It was New Years. Getting fall-down-drunk was almost a _condition_ for a bunch of teenagers, especially when it was the good shit (which, as Toni would tell you, was all that she owned because what was the point in drinking if you were just going to vomit it up in half an hour).

And so they drank.

They did end up playing poker, but not the strip kind.

That was totally a downer, as far as Toni was concerned. What a _waste_. She needed to steal a pair of Bruce's underwear, if only because she could say that it'd happened. Also, she was pretty sure the Upper East Side bitches would sell their _souls_ for Bruce Wayne's underpants.

Toni totally collected souls, so that was cool.

The four of them sat on the floor surrounded by empty bottles and the brilliant drip of gin, and they drank when they won and they drank when they lost. Bruce held his liquor as well as Toni did, but five shots in, Pepper was giggling into Happy's shoulder, and the ugly knot of jealousy in Toni's stomach had her jumping up and looking for a way to escape.

Yeah, she'd totally called it.

Didn't mean she necessarily had to _like_ it.

Bruce found her.

(Just like always.)

"Are they making out, yet?" Toni asked. She was the picture of lightheartedness, wrapped up in a blanket in the window nook.

The open window and the bottle of vodka gave her away, though.

She didn't invite him to sit, but he did anyway. It was basically a standing invitation, anyway. Bruce draped his arm around her shoulders, and Toni let him because some part of tired of kissing people she didn't know and Bruce was—Bruce was Bruce.

He was going to be the death of her, whether she was prepared to admit it or not. Except yeah, okay, she'd admitted that like a hundred times. Mostly to _his face_. It made him go all sorts of colours and probably he just rage-quit. It was always a funny image.

Toni leaned back against him. Her neck cricked uncomfortably, and she shifted until her legs were splayed across his and she was able to look him in the eye.

"Hey, answer me," she said, and poked his side. "Are they making out, yet?"

"Probably," Bruce shrugged.

"You're a tool," Toni said. She dropped her gaze to her lap, and went over quantum dressing-downs in her head to avoid having to see his reaction. He'd heard her say that before—Toni didn't mince her words, not ever—but she'd never really meant it.

She wondered if he'd be able to tell the difference when she actually did.

Probably not.

Bruce might have been stupidly observational, but he didn't really understand people. Or maybe he did, and he just didn't understand _Toni_ -speak (despite having known her for _how_ many years? What _was_ that, like, _seriously_ ). So he probably wasn't going to get it and she was probably just going to get mad and then she'd throw things and that would be the end of that.

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Toni broke out in goose bumps and silently cursed New York's winter air.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"No, you're not," Toni muttered.

They had conversations like this way too often.

Seemed to be all they could talk about, these days.

Toni was pretty much done with it, honestly. There was movement to Bruce, even after all this time—a pulling, raging line between them that kept them both face down in the water, and Toni had been drowning for so long that she didn't know what breathing was like, anymore. Pepper was her fresh breath of air, but Pepper liked Happy, and Toni wasn't looking for long-term, anyway.

Her hands closed into fists, and then she was knotting her fingers through his hair and pulling him down and Toni pushed her mouth against his like a lie. He tasted smoky like old money and good cigars, late nights and shitty airplane fare. It should have been terrible, but it really wasn't. Alcohol desperation bubbled on the edges of her senses and something told her she was _really_ going to regret this in the morning.

Yeah.

 _Really_ going to regret this in the morning.

Toni was half in his lap and half up in her own head, and Bruce—being Bruce—was completely stiff beneath her (and not in the good way).

"Uh," she said. "Sorry."

"Toni. I. That…"

"Yeah, okay, Brucey, I get it," Toni said, and climbed off him. She didn't let it phase her (don't let it hurt, don't let it hurt, god, don't let him see that it hurt), because she was Toni Stark, and drunk or not, that never changed.

He didn't let her get far.

Bruce Wayne's hand closed around Toni's Stark's wrist and her brain went _no no no no no spare me this you asshole can you just seriously_ _not_ _if you just_ _quit_ _it that'd be_ _so_ _appreciated_ —

He looked at her with wounded puppy eyes, like she'd just stabbed him in the gut after he'd offered her fresh-made cookies or something. Like she'd fucked his best friend in his bed (which, okay, was more a _Toni_ thing to do, anyway), or snorted his last line of blow when he wasn't looking.

Not that Bruce did blow ( _Toni_ things), but it was the thought that counted.

Somehow, it only made her feel worse.

"Fuck you, too," she said with a huff, and flopped back down next to him.

"Toni…" he trailed off, trying to find the right words and failing spectacularly.

They were both getting a little too good at that. Toni expelled all the breath in her body in one great rush, and tipped her jaw up just to feel the satisfying way her neck went _crack_.

"It was kind of gross, anyway," Toni tried for casual. "You should work on that—what, haven't you kissed any girls?"

(Failed, too, but whatever.)

"You've kissed too many," he said, voice dry as thousand year old bones and all the sand dunes in the Sahara. He visibly shuddered, and went on. "You're like my _sister_ , Toni."

"Haven't you ever read _Flowers In The Attic_?" she asked, too-sweet.

"No, and I probably never will," he replied. He slipped his arm around her shoulders, warm, wary, weak.

The movement was so old and so familiar that it almost made her want to cry.

"You _suck_ at letting people down easy, Bruce," Toni sighed out. She let him jostle her closer; close enough that the crook of his shoulder made for a decent pillow-space, and she sort of flopped there like a fish. She tried not to let herself think in algorithms, frameworks for AI creatures who spoke like her dead butler, for all the things she'd lost.

She definitely didn't look up at Bruce out of the corner of her eye and watch as he watched New York City fly by far beneath them.

His fingers dug into her shoulder. His nails were a blunt pain in her flesh.

The window stayed open, letting in the moon and the night and the whole _world_ , all wrapped up in a New Yorker's muddy layer of snow and string-up Christmas lights.

Neither Toni nor Bruce moved to close it, and that was okay.

—

Pepper made them all pancakes in the morning.

(Morning was a relative term in the Stark mansion—none of them had been up before two in the afternoon, and the sun was already sinking below the horizon.)

The pancakes were chocolate chip-raspberry. It was probably the first decent meal Toni had had in a week, and wasn't that just the saddest thing? She fell on them without manners—Happy snorted, Bruce rolled his eyes, Pepper smiled so wide that Toni thought her face was about to break in half.

"'Ow long 're ou guys sta'in'?" Toni asked around a mouthful of chocolate chips and whipped cream.

Bruce, Happy, and Pep all eyed each other. Toni watched as they had a silent conversation over her head that they thought she wouldn't understand. But Toni understood everything, and she definitely knew those looks; they were all silently talking about how long she could go on her own.

Which was completely unfair, because Toni could _totally_ take care of herself. At least as well as any of them could, at any rate, and that was what mattered, right?

She didn't even wait for them to finish their conversation. She swallowed down her pancakes, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and rolled her eyes at the three of them.

"Oh my god, don't tell me you're actually trying to figure out what to do with me, like, _come on_ , don't you guys know me better than that by now? Oh, wait, you probably took that into account—or at least, Pep probably did, but seriously, guys. I'm not a _child_."

They all sighed heavily.

Toni was deeply offended.

She didn't let it show (much). Instead, she just narrowed her eyes, and glared at them all like they'd personally stabbed her favourite stuffed animal to pieces and then left the fluff on the floor for her to clean up.

"Okay, so, time-out. I am not a kid, no matter how many temper tantrums I've had," Toni said.

"We know that, Toni," Pepper said, soft, soothing. She moved around the table and ran her fingers through Toni's hair. "That's not what we're worried about."

But of course they would go behind her back and worry about her.

That was so _them_.

Toni tried not to vomit up all the wonderful pancakes she'd just consumed. That would just be a waste. And she tried, she _tried_ to take this as a compliment, because they loved her, they did but—well, whatever, she'd never claimed to be any good at love.

Clearly, last night should have been the pinnacle at Toni _sucking at love_.

This—none of this—was new.

Toni looked around at them all. The way they all watched her with the same tired eyes like she was a mildly-irritating but strangely beloved side-show freak on TV had her itching at her skin, trying to rip it off and climb out of herself.

The psychobabble was already setting in.

She shook it off, and smiled at them, bright and empty-headed. That was what they wanted, and Toni could give them that. They wanted her bright and empty-headed and pretty, because those were easy things.

And Toni had never been an easy thing.

"You know what? Never mind. Stay as long as you like," Toni said.

She stuffed another pancake in her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

Later, Toni would tell herself that it was all for the better. They weren't leaving her, not even Bruce, and his speciality _was_ leaving her.

But she'd had it up to _here_ with them and their molly-coddling. It was like an ultimatum: _make no sudden movements, and no one will get hurt_.

She left the table as fast as she could, stomach rolling.

Toni would blame the retching on all the alcohol she'd drank the previous night.

Pepper and Happy cloistered themselves in the spare bedroom early on the evening, and Bruce disappeared early on, as well. Toni sat in the flickering light of the TV on mute, and did what she did best.

She would blame the phone conversation on her conscience.

"Hey, daddy, it's Toni. Um, MIT. I want to do MIT. That—college, I want to go to college. I want to do the college thing."

The line crackled with static.

Toni held her breath, and prayed to a god she didn't believe in.

"… _Alright, kiddo. Lemme get things set up. Sit tight_."

"Okay," Toni said into the receiver. "Thanks, dad."

" _No problem_."

She didn't tell him she loved him.

She didn't even say goodbye.

But Toni set the phone back in its cradle, hands infinitely gentle. She sat back against the couch, feeling more serene than she had in a long time. This was probably one the stupider life decisions she'd made recently (and that was saying something), but whatever.

She couldn't go back to school.

She couldn't.

It wasn't going to be okay, no matter what Pepper said.

It just wasn't.

She didn't fit there, anymore. She didn't fit there with Pepper. She couldn't stand it here in New York, and she'd never really fit with Happy, anyway. And she didn't even want to _contemplate_ going to Gotham, so she didn't really fit with Bruce, either.

Maybe she'd never really fit anywhere.

(Boarding school was no place for genius girls and their emotional baggage, anyway. Just saying.)

Toni dug her fingers into the couch, and thought that it was about time that she start building herself a place to fit.

After all, that was maybe the only survival skill her father had taught her:

If you can't figure out where you fit, you break and bleed and destroy and build until you _do_ have a place of your own. And if that doesn't work, you start over again, even if it's from scratch.

And Toni could do that.

Toni could break and bleed and build and destroy.

She was a Stark.

Destroying was one of the things that she did best. It was hereditary, after all, and weapons of mass destruction were sort of her family's _thing_. So there was that.

Toni turned the TV off, and closed her eyes.

She just needed to rest for a while—

And then it was the morning, and Toni had sun in her eyes, and she had no idea where the night had gone. Bruce was probably hiding away from the sunlight ( _freakin' cavedweller_ , Toni thought with a snort), Pep was still hiding away in some forgotten room with Hap (um, _ew_ ), and Toni had only the dust and silence for company.

She pushed herself off the couch, snapped the cricks out of her neck, and wandered into the kitchen. There was some instant coffee around, she was pretty sure. Coffee was her rock—coffee was _great_ , Toni totally knew nothing else in the entire world could compare because it was like perfect, it kept her from going crazy and all of those other horrible things.

She reached for the Baileys, too, because why not?

"You're too young to drink," Bruce said.

Toni flapped her hand at him, poured herself three-quarters of a coffee mug full, and said "Your _face_ is too young to drink."

"That doesn't even make sense, Brucey."

He made a long-suffering noise, and eyed her when she plopped down next to him. Toni slurped down the milky coffee-con-alcohol down, and didn't raise her eyes from the countertop.

"What d'you wanna do, while you're here?" she asked the granite.

He grunted.

Toni rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. "God, you're so _helpful_ , Bruce. Is that what you tell _all_ the girls?"

"It's too early for this, Toni," he said. He was probably rubbing his forehead and being totally let down at her general existence. "Can't we just have quiet?"

"Think about who you're talking to," Toni said kindly, and patted him on the shoulder as sympathetically as she could. "Oh, hey, did you know there's a law that says I can go outside without a shirt on? I love Manhattan."

" _What_."

"Yeah! It's—"

Toni rambled about topless women and law for fifteen minutes, clearly to distract him from questioning her about any phone calls she may or may not have made the previous night. Of course, he probably _wouldn't_ ask about her cell history, but really, she wasn't about to chance it. There was no telling what Bruce would pull to keep her away from college.

(There were _boys_ at college.)

"Toni," said Bruce.

"What?"

"Quiet time, now."

Toni rolled her eyes. Quiet time was _boring_ time.

But that was how they spent the rest of the day. The rest of the week, for that matter—they spent it in quiet companionship. Happy baked cookies with cooking regalia that Toni didn't even know she owned; Pepper tried to get her to do all the homework she'd so far ignored; Bruce pretty much ignored her.

Toni was not okay with any of this.

(Except the cookies. Toni was so down with the cookies. Happy was a decent baker; she was dually impressed. She was definitely going to keep him around, even if Pepper didn't.)

Regardless, it was how things went.

They built themselves a little shelter in Toni's mansion for a week, an almost-family but not quite.

Toni could feel them watching her at odd moments, like they were all waiting for her to snap.

God, didn't they know by now that she had breakdowns when she was _alone_?

 _Jesus, gimme a little credit_ , Toni thought wearily when Pepper snuck into her bedroom and beneath the sheets to curl up as close as she could. But she couldn't begrudge Pep this, not right now, at any rate. There was no telling when it was going to happen again, if it was going to happen again at all.

Pepper was going to live her life.

And that was cool.

That was totally cool.

"Hey, Pep?" Toni whispered.

"Hmmngh?"

"I love you."

"I know, Toni. Go to sleep," Pepper murmured sleepily into her hair.

"'Kay."

And Toni did try.

But the sleep didn't come.

"Pep?"

Silence.

"I'm sorry," Toni said.

(Toni only did apologies when no one could hear. It was easier on everyone that way.)

Pepper didn't reply.

 _Relief_.

—

They got ready to leave in the morning.

Bruce, back to Gotham and the high towers of his empire; Pepper, back across the country to her family; Happy, back to his mother down the street.

They went to the airport together, though, later; Hap and Pepper clung to each other desperately while Toni made gagging noises and Bruce just rolled his eyes. Everything was _kiss kiss love love marriage marriage we'll see each other again i promise_ and Toni definitely didn't feel sick at all.

But it was good, it was okay, things were moving.

Happy waved frantically as Bruce and Pep went through airport security. He waved until he couldn't see either of them anymore. Toni didn't say anything, because there was a part of her that thought she was going to lose it if she opened her mouth at all.

"Take me home," Toni said.

Neither said a word the entire ride back.

 _So this is how it's gonna be, huh, Hap_ , Toni thought.

Well, at least it made sense.

He dropped her off and then he went home.

Toni took a deep breath, and then went upstairs to her bedroom to pack.

—

.

.

.

.

.

  
_tbc_.


	4. fight like a girl

—

.

.

.

.

.

College was like this:

Toni had never seen so many people her own age (or a little older, actually, but whatever) in her life. They all rushed around her, a great river of human flesh. She stood like a rock amongst them, still and anchored to the ground.

They didn't sweep her away, but not for lack of trying.

She had the shakes, these days. At first she thought it was just some weird bug, and she turned the smile-wattage on when she moved into the dorm her father had ever-so-lovingly acquired for her.

She could do the whole sorority thing, but Toni had one of those really shitty foreboding feelings that told her that yeah, maybe the whole _sisters_ thing was super-overrated and she needed to get an apartment like ASAP.

And that could have been cool and great and totally quiet, and she would have had a lab all to herself, except that, um, she was a freshman and usually freshies had to live in the dorms or on Greek row. And. Ew.

Her father had been a fraternity boy.

The room he had gotten her?

Yeah, that room was in a house full of boys who drank a lot of beer and probably didn't wash when they had the chance even though they totally should have. Toni was going to have to beat the sense into them, because she was definitely not going to be living like this for long.

But the dorms were long full and she didn't have a Jarvis to fix things for her, anymore.

And so a frat house it was, and Toni was a tiny girl in a world that was too big for her. She hitched on an ugly attitude and an equally ugly hair-style, and she was going to get by if it killed her.

She was Toni Stark.

She could do this.

(Except yeah, maybe not. Maybe this was one of the shittier ideas she'd had, recently. But whatever, she was going with it, because it was better than nothing.)

The boys were all bigger and older than she was, and they really seemed to have no idea what to do with a sixteen-year-old girl in their midst. Three had asked her out the afternoon she'd been moving in—and when she proceeded to knock each one of them off their feet and left them on the ground to bleed without a single fuck to give, she'd gained something like respect. Mostly they just left her alone, and that was good.

But that didn't stop them from hitting on her.

Nor did it stop them from throwing parties.

Sleeping wasn't a thing that Toni was much good at anyway, so whatever. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, popped her hip out, and dared them to come at her. Probably this reaction was going to get her killed one day, but for now, it worked.

"Hey, kid, don't drink that too fast, you'll get sick."

She was sitting on a couch holding a drink that was supposed to be cranberry juice and vodka but was really mostly vodka and a little cranberry for colour. Toni glared at the offending speaker. He was tall and dark-skinned and twice as thick as she was, but he was looking at her with someone like concern in his eyes.

Toni didn't even know his name.

"And you're one to talk?" she asked, sticking her chin out sharply to indicate the beer in his hand.

"I'm twice your size," he said emphatically.

Just to spite him, Toni knocked the rest of the drink back.

He laughed. It was a deep, charming thing that Toni had never heard anything like in her entire life, sent her cheeks up in flames, and _wow_ , Toni Stark _did not blush_. It was just not her thing.

And then he flopped down beside her, draped his arm over her shoulder, and Toni didn't actually push him off.

"I'm James Rhodes," he said.

"Toni," she said. "And seriously? _James_?"

"That's my name, kid," James said.

"That's a terrible name," Toni said decisively. She squinted a little drunkenly at him, taking in the high cheekbones and the deep-set eyes and the dimple in his cheek when he grinned. "You need a nickname."

"You need to stop drinking, Miss Toni."

"And you need a nickname. Jamie? Ugh, no. Jam? No, jam makes me think of toast, and toast—just—no," Toni sighed. "Maybe your last name—um, what was it, again?"

She hadn't forgotten at all, but sometimes it was fun to pretend.

"Rhodes," he said, and he smiled.

"Rhodes…" Toni rolled the name around in her mouth. "Rhodes… Rhodey. I'll call you Rhodey."

He laughed, this time, and Toni shoved him just because she could.

Rhodey shoved her back, and Toni resolutely did not think about her Plans. She'd had more than enough of _those_. They clearly did not work out, because people weren't robots, much as she wished they would be.

That night, Rhodey half-dragged-half-carried her up the stairs to her bedroom.

"You're a mess," he said.

"Yeah, Bruce said that a lot," Toni murmured.

"Go to sleep, Miss," he murmured in reply.

"Ha," Toni said. "Ha, ha, ha. You're alright, Rhodey. You're so alright."

"Glad you think so."

He tucked her in, turned off the light, and then he left.

It was probably the nicest thing any stranger had ever done for Toni in her entire life.

And that was how Toni Stark met James Rhodes, who would become her second Pepper Potts, and would keep her from killing herself on at least three separate occasions.

So that was college. It would blur, in Toni's memory—the classes were boring, the people were boring, but the parties were decent. Because the thing about college was that she could be anyone, anyone at all. She could be one of those weird hippie chicks with too-long skirts and feathers in their hair, or one of the girls with skirts so short she could see the tops of their thigh-highs, or one of the girls with their hair in braids to keep out of their way as they worked in the quiet of coffee shops.

But in the end she was Toni, and that meant booze and bad life decisions.

It was probably never going to change.

Rhodey mostly just followed her around; he spent his time apologizing to the people she pissed off. The tagline was a contrite look and a sighed "Sorry, she does what she wants."

Of course, it got to the point where everyone just accepted that Toni Stark was a hot mess, and went with it.

She got grease in her hair just in time for prom. The year flew by so fast she didn't see where it went. The frat boys watched her dance and tried to drink her under the table, but never succeeded. New York's Upper East Side had taught her a lot of things; how to hold her alcohol was certainly one of them.

College was just like high school, only with more freedom and fewer rich kids.

Toni would have liked it if she could have stayed sober long enough to make proper memories.

It was too bad, really.

"What are you going home to, Miss?"

Rhodey always called her that. Toni stared at the ceiling of her bedroom, musing and drawing her finger back and forth in the air as she thought about fractals and homes with no souls.

"I don't really have anywhere to go, Rhodey," she said carelessly. "I was thinking of staying here."

He didn't tell her that she couldn't do that (that was still a Pep thing, and Rhodey, while great, hadn't reached Pep's level of not-taking-your-bullshit-Toni). He just looked at her like he had no idea what to do with her. He shook his head, and picked her up, heaved her over his shoulder.

"Well, I guess you'll just have to come home with me, then, won't you!"

"Hey, hey, Rhodey, how about—Rhodey, put me down, seriously—NO, RHODEY, PUT ME DOWN, PLEASE?"

He set her down.

Toni blinked at him. "I didn't actually expect you to put me down."

"Bruce wouldn't, huh?" Rhodey snickered.

Toni grumbled under her breath. "I mention Bruce Wayne _once_ —"

"Make that a thousand times, Miss," Rhodey cut in.

"Shut up, Rhodey, your count-meter is _so_ off, I've mentioned him like _once_ , and you get your panties all up in a twist, like, what even is that, how am I supposed to compete with _Bruce Wayne_ , right?"

"I always forget you're talking, it's like having my own annoying little sister here again."

"Wow, class-act, Rhodey," Toni quipped at him.

"You like it," Rhodey said, angelic smile plastered all over his stupid-smug face.

Which, excuse _you_ , was totally Toni's thing.

If he had been anyone else, she would have punched him.

She felt like that about the people she liked, a lot. Way too much, even, but whatever, it was just a thing that she did. She wanted to punch everyone in the face, because honestly, _everyone_ needed to be punched in the face. It was just, like, a fact of _life_.

And so she kind of looked at him and he kind of looked at her, and Toni nodded resolutely to herself. Even if it was just for a little while, she would go. She would go. She would go.

"Okay," she said.

Clearly they were going to be BROS FO LYFE.

If only Toni thought like that.

She wore her graduation hat crooked, and did not give a single fuck.

(Except for the ones she gave when there were attractive people involved because _what_ , beautiful people, _no judgement_.)

Yeah, definitely a hot mess.

And, you know what, shit was going great. College was over in the blink of an eye, and Toni—Toni wasn't even eighteen. Toni was still seventeen, not even legal, and barely—barely even there. She didn't really do that whole being there thing. She never had. She probably never would.

 _Flighty Broad_ was totally a nickname that she worked.

"That means you'll come? My ma's been—"

Toni nodded solemnly, and cut him off. "Yeah, I know, you mom loves me, I dunno why, Rhodey, it's like really weird because I'm such a terrible influence—you know, do you think she thinks we're dating? I bet she thinks we're dating, and that's why she lets you hang out with me. Dating sucks, did you know that? Dating totally sucks. Liking people sucks. Especially dumbass rich assholes with, like, great hair—Bruce has great hair, it's not even fair, his hair is nicer than _mine_ , what even is that?—who never smile except when there're gross papa-nazi's around—"

"You're rambling," he reminded her.

"Yeah, well, I'm not much good at anything else, right?" Toni tried for a grin.

Rhodey sighed. "C'mon, Miss, you need some sun."

Yeah, Toni thought, she kind of did.

"I should call Pep," she said, mostly to herself. "See how she's doing, y'know, I mean I haven't seen her in—"

"Toni," Rhodey cut her off with a hand on her shoulder. His brown fingers were warm and comforting, kinder and more loving than her own father's had ever been. "Toni, you need to stop."

"I don't know how," she whispered.

It was sad, because it was true.

Rhodey exhaled heavily through his nose.

"You'll figure it out," he said.

This was also true.

And then:

"Pack your stuff, Miss. We're leaving the day after tomorrow."

Toni nodded, and she smiled like a decent human being and said goodnight and sent him on his way. She managed to stave off the panic attack to get him out the door and back to his own apartment, but as soon as he was gone and the door closed behind him…

Well, uh, she freaked right the fuck out.

There were six bottles of beer plus half a bottle of strawberry vodka that she'd filched from one of the frat boys tucked beneath her bed, and Toni dove for them without another thought. There was oblivion in alcohol, oblivion and ease and if she accidentally bought a first-class ticket back to New York while she was plastered, no one would blame her, right?

 _Right_.

Because that was _totally_ how it would work.

So that was exactly what she did.

Toni got really, really, _really_ drunk.

And then she proceeded to buy her way home, and probably some cats and also maybe an island in the Caribbean. She wasn't actually sure about that last point, because by then, everything was pretty fucking blurry and ridiculous. Also hilarious, and why _wouldn't_ she buy an island in the Caribbean? It wasn't like she couldn't afford it.

Or rather, it wasn't like her daddy couldn't afford it.

Whoops, whatever!

Her flight was in three hours.

Toni stared blearily (drunkenly, rather: same difference, at this point) around her room. The only thing she really cared about was her notebook, because it had all her plans and the doodles in the margins that she liked. It had the good ideas, but the clothes and the person she'd been in this place, they weren't—they weren't—

They weren't _her_.

It wasn't _right_.

She'd come to MIT to escape.

It was only now that she was realizing that there was really no escaping yourself. Not when you were a messed up teenage girl living in an adult's world that you have no fucking clue how to handle. Not when your best-friend-who-you-were-kind-of-in-love-with was some douchebag who didn't know how to pick up a goddamn phone. Not when your other best-friend-who-you-were-kind-of-in-love-with was dating a kid you'd grown up with. Not when—

 _Wow_ , Toni thought. _I have more issues than the Times. I am such a freak_.

And wasn't that just the most damning thing?

She was running away again.

But hey, it was exactly what she was good at.

Toni shivered in her big cold empty room, devoid of life and heat. She built herself robots, Toni; she built herself friends, because real life people were too hard.

"Sorry, Rhodey," she said aloud. "I'm sorry I'm a shitty person. I know. It's just… it's not you. It's me."

It was the most cliché speech she'd ever given, and worse for the fact that it wasn't even in person. She'd leave him a note. He'd get it, and he'd be mad, but… At least he had some warning, right? He was better off without her. Most people were.

(And to be fair, this was more than she'd done for Bruce or Pepper, and that was saying something.)

It didn't stop her from leaving, though.

—

New York never fucking changed, though, Toni thought bitterly.

It was blistering hot and sick-muggy, the air all thick up with smog and something a little less attractive than the three-day coke-bender that she may or may not have gone on upon unlocking the mansion and stumbling into a building that hadn't been dusted in nearly two years.

This place was hated.

This place was home.

Toni climbed upstairs, tired in the bones. God, she was so tired. Three-day coke-bender or not, she had shit to do.

Sleep?

Sleep was not on that list.

She'd slept fitfully on the flight home—well, yeah, a forty-five minute flight was one of those things that you just didn't really sleep on, even if you _were_ sitting comfortably in first-class with big leather seats and cheap champagne on hand.

Besides, she wasn't really _that_ tired.

(This was a lie.)

Her lab had missed her. Or she'd missed it. Whatever, it was the same thing, because she'd missed it the way an improperly-healed wound hurt; aching, long, settling in deep over her shoulder blade and cutting into her brain stem.

It was the same way she missed Pepper. It was the same way she missed Bruce.

Toni suddenly hated the both of them.

Fiery, fierce, burning.

She would have ruined herself some more if she thought it would have done anything at all. Pepper hadn't called since Christmas. Bruce hadn't called since she'd left.

She was in no position to be doing anything that included other human beings.

Obviously, Toni was terrible at them.

And so Toni holed herself up in a lab that hadn't seen her presence in a very long time, in a house that was really mansion that hadn't seen real human habitation in longer. She didn't have this, anymore. She didn't have it.

She built her first bomb, that night.

Which, hello?

 _Cool_.

She stayed up until the sun rose, and then she called Pepper.

"Oh my god, guess what, I just built a bomb."

"… _Are you back in New York?_ " Pepper's voice crackled with static.

"Yeah, and, shit, I gotta call Rhodey and apologize, I sorta left him hanging—"

Silence. " _…You didn't_ _actually_ _build a bomb, did you_?"

"Uh… Maybe?"

"… _You—you—oh my god, Toni, stay where you are and_ _don't touch anything_ _, do you understand?_ _Nothing_ _. Do not touch a thing._ "

Toni took nothing from this except:

"Are you coming to visit?"

" _Yes. Just. Don't do anything. I'll be there in five minutes_."

Pepper hung up on her, and Toni was left to puzzle over how on earth Pepper was going to get there in like five minutes when she lived on the other side of the country. Had Pepper invented some weird teleportation thing that she hadn't told Toni about? Had this been a thing without her knowledge of it being a thing?! Did _Bruce_ know about it?

As an afterthought, Toni tried to remind herself that she needed to call Rhodey.

He deserved that much, at least.

(Three friends were too many. She had no idea how she was supposed to handle this. Wait, technically it was four, if you counted Happy. Somehow, though, people always forgot to count Happy. It was very strange.)

Toni held the phone, and fiddled with it for a while as she looked for the courage to call him.

He was going to shoot her.

And she actually wasn't even going to blame him if he did.

Because, like, he'd kept her from doing stupid things. He'd kept college from being more of a nightmare than it already had been—he'd held her hair back when she'd vomited, and he hadn't even complained when she got her insides all over his brand new white sneakers, he'd just held her and wiped her mouth and smiled with his kind brown eyes, and Toni had asked him once _why can't I love people right, Rhodey? Why can't I love you right?_

He hadn't answered her. But he probably didn't know, either.

She almost dialled the number twice, and then Pepper burst in.

"BOMB. PUT AWAY. DISMANTLE. STOP."

Toni looked at her with innocent wide eyes like _who, me_ , and pretended that she hadn't heard her at all despite the fact that Pep looked like she was fit to breathe fire or maybe help assassinate the President. That was definitely a Pepper thing to do. Definitely.

"What? I can't hear you!"

Pepper's eyeball twitched.

Maybe this was a bad idea, Toni reflected.

"Um… Please don't kill me?"

"Fix that bomb, and I'll think about it," said Pepper, nostrils flared, breathing heavily through her nose.

Yeah, this was definitely a bad idea. Foresight was maybe a thing Toni ought to work on.

Or at least, not telling Pepper when she built weapons that could cause widespread damage and possibly mass destruction.

Toni moved slowly, the same way she would have approached a wounded tiger, and set about taking apart the nitrogen and the fuses and the casings because yeah, you know what, Pepper was kind of terrifying when she got like this.

It took her all of ten minutes to dismantle the bomb.

"See? It's okay, I'm finished, it's not—"

Pepper threw her arms around Toni's neck, and hugged her so hard that she nearly cut her air supply off.

"Can't—Pep, can't breathe—" she got out. Pepper's grip went slack for a moment, long enough for Toni to take a great gulp of air, and then her arms tightened again.

"I missed you," she said into Toni's throat. "You're so dumb, and you didn't say goodbye, and—and—don't do that again, okay? Don't do that to me, Toni."

"You know I don't do goodbyes, Pep," Toni said. She clung to Pepper, nails digging in to her best friend's arms because this was Pep.

This was _Pep_ , and Toni still didn't know how she thought she'd ever be okay without her.

They held onto each other for a while after that, sinking down onto the couch with their arms looped around each other's necks

"So what's it like being a college grad?"

"What are you doing in New York?" Toni countered.

Pepper flushed, and Toni thought _ah. Hap,_ _right_.

"I asked first," Pepper said.

"College is… whatever, you're in college, too, remember? You do the college thing! You study and you, I don't know, learn things—which, excuse me, was so boring because I basically knew it all _anyway_ but I guess I need the proof which is _stupid_ , I can dismantle a bomb in like half a minute, I just proved it, and, Pep, let's be real here, you probably did the better than me, because I mean I lived in my dad's old frat house and drank a lot of beer and—"

Toni rambled.

She knew that Pepper was watching her, settling back into to how they were. She didn't ask about Bruce, and Pepper didn't bring him up, and that was okay, too.

Everything was okay, except it really, you know, _wasn't_.

Toni imagine digging her fingers into Bruce's throat, imagined shaking him and shaking him in that little bathroom where they'd met when she was eleven years old and less bitter than she was now. She imagined it, curled into Pepper as she was, and thought of the glitz and glam of New York trembling down the empty planes of her body.

In her mind, she clothed herself in it. She wore the red glare of the Radio City Music Hall through the rain on her lips, the sharp reflection of the morning sun off wet asphalt like a slick band of yellow silk around her breasts; the hum of the air-conditioners and the streets wrapped around her waist like a skirt, and the glitter of a thousand lights in a city that never slept for her heels.

She smiled, sharp like metal glory, and thought:

Even murderers could be forever-gold.

—

So it turned out that Pepper had attacked Columbia's summer classes with her great grades and her great personality and her great face, and, like the fools that they were, they'd fallen ass-up in love with her. Toni couldn't blame them, not really, because hi? Pepper was actually basically perfect.

And yeah, she and Happy were still making doe eyes at each other.

It was still really gross and yet, disturbingly adorable.

Toni wasn't at all sure what to make of it.

So she decided not to make anything of it, and get to work on turning twenty-one so she could get her hands on her daddy's company. Or, well, take _over_ her daddy's company; he didn't want it any more than she did, but Toni was young and Toni was strong and Toni was too bitter not to take things and twist them in her own image.

She was a little bit egotistical like that.

Plus, there wasn't anyone around to tell her not to.

Her mama was dead.

Jarvis was deader.

 _Fucking dead people_ , Toni thought, and wielded a blowtorch with thick gloves on her hands and greased smeared across her cheeks.

She was Antonia Stark, and she had _so_ many things to prove.

To her father, to her teachers, to the world; because there was a difference between being smart and being beautiful and being smart _and_ beautiful. They were separate things entirely.

And Toni?

She walked down the streets, some days, and clambered up fire escapes on old decrepit buildings that didn't belong in all of New York's high-flying fast-paced glory. They didn't really belong anywhere, but all of the books told her that this was something she was supposed to want—this was something she was supposed to _love_.

But Toni didn't know what love was.

Because the first time she'd fallen in love had been at eight years old, and it was with a circuit board. It was the only love that had lasted—it had lasted through boys and girls and Pepper and _Bruce_. It had lasted through her mother's death, and her butlers, and it would last through her father's when he finally decided to kick the bucket.

(No, she was not bitter.)

All the people she'd ever really loved had disappeared.

 _Wow, okay_ , Toni thought, _enough of that_. She tossed her hair up into something that could be called a bun (though really it was far too short for that), pulled her goggles down over her eyes, and turned the torch on.

This would be her armour, for now.

At least until someone invited her out, and she smeared makeup on thick like cake batter to hide her fear. She would use it like armour and like a weapon.

If MIT had taught her anything at all, it was that her most dangerous weapon was the one between her legs.

And later, she would think that this was the start—this was the first time. In the coming back, New York had eaten something of her. It had taken her heart, eaten her alive all up from the guts to the brains, and now it would take everything else that was left of her.

Pepper went back to school, and Toni tumbled back into rich people parties, and rich people parties' _alcohol_.

(She maybe had a problem.)

And of course, the tabloids had a field day with it, because:

STARK HEIRESS RETURNS TO THE BIG APPLE, _cont. on p. A4_

ANTONIA PREGNANT? _a source close to the family reveals all!_

STYLE TIPS FROM ANTONIA STARK—HOW TO GET THE HAIR,THE LIPS, THE LOOK! _five-page spread, p. 69-73_

DADDY CUT ME OFF! _Her drinking, the boys, the toys—Antonia Stark on the family business_!

Toni tried not to look at them.

None of them were true.

(Frankly, there was no one close enough to the family to even talk about any of it. None of her father's old advisors had access to her, and Toni hadn't even seen the main man since he'd showed up at MIT to curve his hand around her shoulder at an awards presentation, smile broadly, and make small talk with the dean. It had taken more will than Toni had thought she'd had not to shove him off. God. _God_.)

What did they know, anyway?

MIT had been running away from all of this, but all of _this_ was running from something else. It wasn't anything Toni could put her finger of, because she really just didn't _know_.

What was she so scared of?

(A lot of things, actually.)

Summer in New York was a heady thing. She'd always known that—and right now, while she still didn't have a controlling interest in the company, she could fuck around with beautiful people and make mistakes and die over the _scritch_ of a record skipping late at night. She'd ride the rails on high heels and higher expectations.

She would ruin everything, just to watch it all fall.

And when the city buzzed with activity, Toni hid down in her lab with suturing equipment and gunpowder, blasting shitty pop through robots with frequencies louder than was strictly legal.

She was seventeen and beautifu.

But not sweet. Not nice. Not _good_.

She pretended to be none of those things, thank god.

New York was shady and decadent around her at night, but during the day, Toni alternatively worked, drank, or ate.

( _sleep who needs sleep pssssssh your mom needs sleep_ )

And it was through this ridiculous dedication (some would call it _utter stupidity_ —or at least, Pepper would), that Toni created JARVIS.

Because she's been eight years old when she'd fallen in love with a circuit board, and it was the only love that had lasted. And she was, in fact, enough of a megalomaniac to want to raise the dead.

Toni played God.

After all, it was something she was good at.

"Hello, Miss Stark," JARVIS said.

It sounded so much like him, Toni almost started to cry.

Instead, she called Pepper.

Like most of Toni's decisions that involved Pepper and technology, this one was not one of the brightest things she had ever come up with.

Not quite as stupid as the bomb phone call, but pretty fucking close.

"Pep, Pep, you gotta come over, I just did the coolest thing, I seriously can't—you gotta come see this, I mean—!"

" _Toni_ ," Pepper voice was a crackly hiss through the phone. " _I am in_ _class_ _!_ "

"Class, smash, whatever, you can blame me, but you actually need—!"

" _Has anyone died_?" Pepper interrupted her.

"Um, no?"

" _And you're not hurt_?"

"…Also… no…?"

There was a huge exhale of something that might have been relief. Pepper always was very strange. " _Toni, I am hanging up now. Call Bruce, if it's really that important!_ "

And without further ado, Toni's best friend hung up on her.

"Rude, Pep," Toni sighed aloud.

The temptation to call Bruce Wayne was very great.

The temptation to call Rhodey was greater.

(Also it would probably hurt less. Talking to Bruce would just hurt. Rhodey would be mad but… well, mad was easier to deal with than quiet blame. Toni couldn't deal with quiet blame.)

The phone rang three times before someone picked up. " _'Lo?_ "

"Um, hi, is Rhodey—um, I mean, James, is James there?"

" _Who is this_?"

"Toni," she said, something foreboding curling in her stomach. "It's Toni. We, uh, went to school together?"

Whoever it was covered the mouthpiece on the other end, Toni was sure, because she could hear someone yelling Rhodey's first name, muffled and strangely low. Something even softer—a reply, she guessed—and then:

" _FINALLY DECIDED TO CALL, HUH, MISS_?!"

Toni winced. "Hi, Rhodey."

She could practically _feel_ his seething rage, despite the distance. He was probably doing that frowny-face thing he always did when he was disappointed in her, just like all the times she'd gotten drunk and confessed things that she'd never thought she'd ever tell anyone, or gotten drunk and kissed him, or gotten drunk and he'd had to carry her up the stairs, or gotten drunk and ended up in someone-whose name-she-didn't-know's bed.

(Which was a lot of her college experience, now that Toni thought about it. Getting drunk and doing stupid shit that she would later regret. You really would have thought she'd have learnt, but the thing was Toni didn't do learning very well when it got in the way of the things she wanted to do. Um, oops?)

He breathed heavily at her in response.

"I'm sorry?" Toni offered.

" _Not good enough, Miss. I was worried_."

"I know, and I'm—I didn't mean to," Toni said. She blinked rapidly—what were her tear ducts doing, was there was way she could remove those, they were getting in her way—and took a deep breath to fortify herself. "D'you wanna come to New York to visit? You could meet Pepper! And JARVIS—oh yeah, I gotta tell you about JARVIS _,_ he's the best, I am a _genius_ —"

" _An' the elusive Mister Wayne_?"

For a moment, Toni hated that she'd ever met Bruce Wayne. "Um, maybe, if he comes. I dunno, though…"

" _You haven't called him, have ya_?"

This time, Toni hated that she'd ever met Rhodey.

"You suck," she told him.

His chuckle was something simple and familiar against her ear. Toni felt a great surge of remorse for the sadness and the hurt that she'd caused him—and that she would continue to cause him. Because she was Antonia Stark, and hurting was so easy.

Hurting was so, so easy.

"Just come, okay? I'll pay for the plane tickets, you won't have to worry about anything, I've totally got it covered, especially now that I've got JARVIS, and just, like, I miss you, okay? I miss you, and I'm dumb, and I'm sorry for running off the way I did because that was a shitty thing to do, but—"

For a second, Toni was trapped in a kind of terrible déjà vu from the last time she'd had a conversation exactly like this.

Only that had been with Pepper, and she had probably been drunk.

(Because when _wasn't_ she drunk, these days?)

" _Course_ ," said Rhodey over the phone. " _You don't have to pay for the tickets, Miss, I got money of my own_."

"No," Toni said softly. "No, let me. Okay? Just as… payback for all the times you took care of me. So let me. Okay? Okay. Good. Now that that's sorted, seriously, you gotta meet JARVIS, I am an actual genius and I deserve the Nobel prize for being so freaking awesome."

And she didn't mention that she had more money than she could spend in three lifetimes in her trust fund—he already knew that, and it was just tacky to bring it up. Toni might have been an asshole, but she understood how friendship worked.

(Er. Sort of. Kind of. A little bit?)

After a long silence, Toni thought she could hear him nodding.

" _Alright, Miss. If you insist_ ," he said.

"Awesome," said Toni. "Just, like, what's the nearest airport, you gotta gimme that—wait, Philly, you said Philly, right? Yeah, you definitely said Philly, I can do Philly, that is definitely a thing we can do. Just get to the airport, it'll be—"

" _Waiting_ ," Rhodey said. " _I know you, Miss Toni_."

Toni grinned at nothing. "Cool. See ya, Rhodey!"

She hung up before he had time to say _goodbye_.

—

"You can't just call Bruce every time I do something, Pepper!"

"Actually," Pepper said calmly, "I can."

She was shuffling through her research papers—Toni caught sight of the words _market_ and _unequivocal defense_ and _supply and demand_ , and shuddered—and so didn't see the face that Toni was making in her general direction.

"Rhodey took care of me the entire time I was at college! He stopped me from jumping off a _roof_! _Twice_! Isn't that good enough for you?!"

Pepper sighed darkly. "I wish it was, Toni. I would love it to be, because then I wouldn't have to do this."

"So why isn't it?! And why does Bruce have to know? He's _Batman_ , Pep! You know it even thought I know you pretend not to, but oh my god, you're like a less crazy version of me—"

"Excuse me," Pepper cut her off. "I am nothing like you."

"—and you're not _blind_ , seriously, is Gotham's population just hopelessly stupid? Or what? Like do they actually not get the connection? Bruce goes away, Batman goes away; Batman gets hurt, _Bruce_ gets hurt. I mean, Jesus, Pep, I figured it out when I was _drunk_ , and shouldn't that tell them that they have a problem? He really needs to be more, I don't know, subtle. Subtle? Is that the right word? I don't even—"

Pepper pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off the oncoming headache that was Toni Stark at her whiniest. Or her craziest.

Both adjectives worked, currently.

Toni paced, flicking her hands the way you would to rid yourself of water. She was jittery from too much coffee, too much anxiety, too much stress, and she wouldn't quite look Pepper in the eye.

"I don't get why—I don't—Pep, why did you have to—?"

"Because he asked me to," Pepper said, still shuffling through her papers. She didn't even deign to look up.

"What. No. That is not. _No_. He's not the boss of me! He can't—he can't tell me who to date, or—!"

"Of course he can't," Pepper said. "But I know you, Toni. If Bruce doesn't like him, you'll keep him around just out of spite."

"I am not like that!"

"Yes," said Pepper, "you are."

Toni disliked this immensely.

And Toni, being Toni, decided to make this plain by sweeping Pepper's work off the desk, and sitting on top of her. "Take it back, Pep."

"I think you just proved my point," Pepper sighed. She shoved Toni off to land with an _OW, PEP, WHAT WAS THAT FOR_ on the floor, and went about gathering up and fixing the destruction that followed Toni around like ducklings.

They both had a sudden sense that this was probably how the rest of their lives were going to go.

Toni grinned widely.

"You love me," she said.

"I wish I didn't," Pepper groaned.

A beat, then:

"…Do you really mean that, Pep?"

Pepper looked down to meet Toni's gaze. Her eyes with wide dark pits thread through with a horrible empty fear that ate at the inside of Pepper's eyelids. She reached out, and knotted her hand in Toni's hair.

"God, of course not," she said. She slid out of the chair to loop herself around Toni's too-skinny frame, hair orange as a forest fire. "Oh my god, Toni, no. I love you. Of course I love you."

"That doesn't answer my question," Toni said.

Pepper held her close, whispered soft _shhh-shhh_ noises into the side of her face, and "No, Toni, I don't mean it, I don't. I always want you around, I always want to love you, _shhh-shhh_ , it's okay, it's okay."

Toni curled her fists into the fabric of Pepper's shirt, gulping at air to control the floodgates behind her eyes.

The _weirdest_ things set her off.

"Y'know, Pep, it doesn't even make sense. Like I don't. I don't. I don't get it, you know? I really don't. Like why do I—why am I—?"

"It's okay, Toni. It's okay," said Pepper.

They held onto each other very tightly for a very long time.

(They seemed to be doing that a lot, lately.)

Toni took a shaky breath in.

"Okay," she said. "You're right. It's okay. I'm just—I'm just—yeah, you know what, we'll not talk about what I am, because clearly it is really messed up."

"Toni, you're not—" Pepper started, but Toni slapped a hand over her mouth and shook her head violently, dark curls spilling everywhere.

"Yeah, you know what, Pep, I really am. But it's. It's okay. Because Rhodey'll be here, soon, and then you and Happy can go off and smush your faces together—and don't tell me you don't want to do that, _I know that you do_ —and Bruce… well, he's whatever, so who cares about him anyway."

A pause. Toni pulled out her biggest, most innocent, most guileless look. It was the same one that always worked on cops and liquor store attendants. "Can we just go with it, for like, _once_? Just _once_?"

Pepper just sighed in reply.

This was probably not the acquiescence that Toni took it for.

BUT WHATEVER, NO ONE CARED ABOUT BRUCE WAYNE ANYWAY, RIGHT?

 _RIGHT_.

This was _totally_ how it was going to go.

(At least as far as Toni was concerned, anyway; there was no telling quite what Pepper would come up with.)

"Look, you an' Hap can come with me when I got get him, okay? So you don't—don't do your freakout thing, you can meet him right when he gets off the plane. Which, oh shit, is in like half an hour, so we got like half an hour to waste before we have to leave."

Pepper didn't ask how this made sense, as there was none to be made.

"As long as you don't go off to suck face, I don't—" Toni went on blithely.

Pepper tuned the words out, and watched as Antonia Stark put herself back together.

It was a painful thing to watch, though Pepper would never admit it. Toni brought up a sheet of fresh-minted red chrome a foot thick between herself and the world. It kept her safe, but it kept everyone else out.

Pepper ached for Toni to be okay.

Even if it was only for a little while.

 _Let her be okay_ , Pepper prayed.

When Toni wasn't looking, she shot off another text, and hoped that their old friend could get there in time to stop their glass-house hurricane girl from doing something really stupid.

Pepper may have been the most important person in the world, but Bruce Wayne knew how to handle Toni in a way that no one else quite understood. Maybe it was that the pair of them had been friends longer than ought to have been allowed, or maybe it was just that they understood each other on a level that she didn't get. Maybe it was an orphan thing.

(Toni had been an orphan since before the day that her mother died. Pepper knew that. Pepper knew that so well.)

Sometimes it made her sad.

Most of the time, though, it just made her want to vomit.

On my way, was Bruce's reply. Three words, Pepper knew, ought not have relieved her as much as they did.

She tried very hard not to feel as though she'd just betrayed her best friend.

This was the best for everyone.

Really.

And if Toni…

 _Well_ , Pepper thought tiredly, _someone_ _had to do it_.

"Pep? You okay?"

"Yeah," Pepper said. "It's cold out."

"How is it cold?" Toni demanded. "It's summer—look outside, Pep, does that even look cold at all? _No_. Exactly. That's what I think you meant. Summer. Heat. Debauchery! Pretty people in very little clothing! All the good things in life, right?"

Pepper shuddered. "Whatever you say, Toni."

Toni grinned widely. Her insides were still all shut down, reeling backwards from the ice that Pep's throwaway comment had slipped into the base of her spine. It had frozen all her deep dark sticky places, places that were still tender-vulnerable.

A little bitterly, Toni remembered why she'd left New York in the first place.

It was just that everything she'd ever been was _hard_.

At least at MIT, she'd just been another girl alone at the bar, too young and too jaded for such a grimy place. But in New York?

In New York, she was Howard Stark's wild child, mood changing like candle-flame. In New York, she was too smart for her own good. In New York, her smile was shallow, vapid, and so easy she thought she was probably going to be sick with herself.

In New York, Toni could hate herself to her heart's content.

(Not that she didn't hate herself when she went other places; it was just easier in New York, though she didn't really want to think about why that was. Toni thought, perhaps a little cynical, that it was probably too much like self-introspection. And honestly? She was _so_ not down for that.)

"Anyway, I'm gonna leave now, so if you wanna come, you should probably find your boyfriend. Or maybe a seatbelt. Or something, I dunno, what do people usually have in their cars?"

"Do you even have a license?" Pepper asked.

"Nope," Toni said cheerfully. "What would be the fun in that?"

"Do you even know how illegal that is?"

"Of course I do," Toni laughed. It was a sharp, jagged, high-pitched laugh that grated against the eardrum. No one mentioned it. "But it's more fun, this way!"

"You are going to get us both killed," Pepper said.

"Not you," Toni said. "Probably me, but not you."

And with that, she spun around on her heel, and practically _skipped_ towards the door. It was such a show. Toni didn't believe for a second that Pepper had bought it, but Pepper buying it wasn't the point.

As long as she acted alright, she would _be_ alright.

It's how she'd gotten along before this, and how she would get along after.

She was Antonia Stark, she thought. She had places to be, and bombs to build, and boys to kiss. She had girls to press against walls, skirts to shimmy down her hips, alcohol to let linger on her breath.

She was Antonia Stark, and there was nothing in the world that was going to keep her back.

Not fuckin' now, she thought.

Not fuckin' anymore.

—

.

.

.

.

.

  
_tbc_.

**Author's Note:**

> this is for Torie and Beth, and all of my other lovely tumblr friends. I swear I don't know you guys.
> 
> I wrote this whole chapter in one go  
> help


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